Cancer

Are you saying everyone is from here?

Empty containers. With all the completely disorganized detritus in my house, that would be insanely useful. The extinct language would be great for RPG purposes. #4 ... would you have any control over where the second nose appeared, or how big it was?

Does Colorado School of Mines still give literal silver diplomas to their graduates?

Y'know, this makes me think that they did themselves a disservice by having Thanos be bald. White death could be just his dandruff flakes.

Isn't it better to handcraft them yourself?

I did a fair amount of intended-to-be-nonfiction writing while teaching, but now that I'm retired I've had six months of break from that, and slowly letting the urge to create regenerate. I tried to kickstart my intentional fiction writing for Nanowrimo last month, but stalled out after about 15k words in. Got some good scenes committed to hard electrons, but got stalled out trying to scheme the mesoscale plot arc (that is, the plot arc for the one novel) and mesh it into the longstanding overarching tetrology plot. I have long had the propensity of thinking in scenes and writing those intense nuggets in perhaps extended bursts of activity, and then being less adept at meshing those scenes together into a coherent story. Yes, I am aware that it's possible to keep that sequence-of-scenes structure and shape a good story from that ... several of my favorite scifi works have that structure ... but I haven't developed that technique yet myself to my own satisfaction. Presently I'm consumed in concocting a new RPG campaign and creating stuff going into that. That's enough like creating the materials for a newly assigned college course that the writing part of it is no challenge; it's doing the thinking to make sure it'll be a good, playable, entertaining game for the players. That latter is a process I've botched before.

And will Cylons come and kill you as well?

... said every administrator everywhere.

Wouldn't it just be simpler to destroy everything in the Universe and be done with it?

Administratium That was originally published around 1990. I'm sure the number is up to 666 by now.

Even more math?!?

Candy canes

Trying to type while a cat is determinedly sitting on your lap is quite difficult.

Poo. I want it at Estadio de Villa Ingenio in El Alto, Bolivia. 13,392 feet of altitude.

In creating a new campaign, I find that a lot of genres simply don't appeal to me enough for me to do the work to run them. For some others I have troubles making a campaign that is actually game-able, as opposed to predestined story action withe players strapped into character bodies and obliged to read a fixed script. (I made that mistake back around the turn of this century, and I've taken great pains to avoid doing it again.) Really don't like horror. Not keen on superheroes. In general, I am not interested in most intellectual properties (e.g., it takes intense peer pressure for me to participate in a Star Wars game). We have a large group (usually five players, sometimes six, plus the GM du jour), and I have a difficult time making a modern spy campaign work with that big a group. You might think I'd be able to run a space sci-fi campaign, but no, I know too much real astrophysics and way too many genre tropes there clash violently with what I know. Fantasy is my go-to, and I can work with different power levels for the magic part, but most of what I've actually run has been Western-style high fantasy. Genres not already named ... I may be able to work with if I am allowed slapstick. Only after I've decided whether I can enjoy running a game with a particular concept do I address the question of whether the players in the group would be interested in playing it. Of the group of five plus myself plus one part-timer, all but the part-timer have been running RPGs for decades (I first started running back in 1975, e.g.). Now, I haven't run anything for about five years now, but I am getting the hankerin' now that I've got time. So I am working up a concept (and making sure I can pull it off) now but I haven't floated it in the group yet.

The X-Rated Cookie Cutters: the late-stage technopunk band that never was

Worked out on paper: 1 July 780 AD = 8 Rabi 1 163 AH

(1 AU = 23454.8 Earth radii)

Frankly, the Washington State Ferry system has been a victim of ... Politics, and I am putting this here because it's germane here, and further discussion should go to the inevitable politics thread if it's needed. The legislature has been cheap. They've put off replacing boats as they age out, and they haven't kept ferry worker and work arrangements competitive with other jobs. The Coast Guard has been partly staffing some boats over the last couple years, IIRC. Unfortunately, this is always an east-versus-west (and approximately GOP-vs-Dem) issue in this state. It's a large capital project to buy a new set of boats. But those boats only service the Puget Sound area, so even if the ferry system runs a profit over the long haul (and I don't know at all if it does), the rest of the state sees this as a big budget hit that only benefits a limited part of the state. It is always tempting to defer replacement/expensive episodic maintenance (both for the dollar outflow and the difficult political discussions that accompany such), and that deferral has gone on for too long. It is not the only such thing to have suffered such a problem; for example, we had a major bridge failure on I-5 a couple years back that also came from overly deferred maintenance. There are other associated political problems surrounding non-military shipbuilding of which I am only dimly aware; I have heard it alleged that this is due to the Jones Act, but I am also deeply suspicious of those arguments because at least some of them come from sources I have come to absolutely disbelieve, and now we really are off into politics-land so I will stop here.

sigh....

You still have one? Everyplace I know of eliminated that position 20-30 years back, at least.

Death by a thousand clicks....

Considering Who His Father is ... this statement is tautological.

(OT: And you really don't want to know what part of the dead sea monster that was.) On topic: A massive wave of junk mail and and email spam marketing Triassic Sea-side Condos.

I dunno. This seems rather like Alex Rodriguez's quarter-billion contract back around 2000. It's an old tape with with new numbers scribbled in. An overreacting franchise making a stupid decision.