FrankL

When I was writing a western recently, I asked my wife if I would look good with a mustache. (Complete look of utter horror) S: Um, what kind? M: No. I'm thinking one of those horseshoes. (traced it with my fingers) S: Let me just say this. You can do with your face what you want. Just ask yourself if I'll want to wade through all that bristle to kiss you. Picture purely for reference of a horseshoe mustache. This has the proper stretch down the sides to the jawline, but I wouldn't let the individual hairs be this long Plus, it's Sam Elliot. He could out cowboy John Wayne.

I left work Friday having spent the day in BizTalk-an evil programming... something, designed by Microsoft (at least they sell it and take care of it). The worst part of BizTalk is the sheer number of things you have to fiddle with if something is wrong (and it will be. That's the nature of programming. If the program has any complexity at all, it won't be right the first time. You can produce exactly what the client has asked for but it won't be what they want (but that's another story)). I described my day to my wife like this (she took one look at me when I came in and thought I had been fired, my look was that bad): Me: I spent the day in Biztalk. S: Oh, I thought you had been fired from the look on your face. Me: No. Remember the other night when we watched Flash and Reverse Flash go full-on bumper cars on each other? S: Yep. Me: I was wearing red. S: Oh. Me: And then Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and Gorilla Grodd joined in on the beat down. S: I'm sorry. I knew that come Monday, I would be back in it or trying to connect PL/SQL to a RESTful web service using OAuth2. Neither were happy thoughts, so I've been dreading coming back to work every time I thought about it over the weekend. I get to work, already feeling the dread of loading BizTalk and see I have an email from a manager who can't find a new employee in the system. Apparently a program I take care of that runs every night didn't run correctly last night. A little digging, and it hasn't completed a run correctly since December 5. But no one has noticed. It's been putting error messages in the log and that's it. Oh, frabjous day.

Last night my eldest (7) took all his remaining allowance and birthday money (~$40) and put it in an envelope to give to the church. He said, "The church needs it more than I do. It will help." My wife and I were absolutely stunned. He's had his eyes on a big set of Legos for a while and was saving for that.

We had our own Urban Thursday last night at home. We streamed both parts of Arrow Vs. Flash.

In the discussion thread on this post, the Giant says it's not something that many clerics know. This is how vampirism works in OOTS world, but only 1 in 4 clerics know that.

Had a good day with the family today. We went to the Science Center of Iowa, and they had redone most of the exhibits. Apparently, there have been a huge number of dinosaur species discovered since I stopped reading about them all the time (20+ years ago). I recognized 1 of the names. The boys loved those rooms. Then they built paper rockets and launched them from air guns. My youngest sat there tweaking his to see if he could make it go further. The eldest was happy with his making it 40-50 feet each launch. Youngest was getting close but just wanted to see IF. They've taken a recent interest in the solar system, so the "star room" was next. We watched a live show with one of the scientists at the center telling about the skies of Iowa and what we could see tonight. The oldest was answering her questions and pointing things out to me. Then we saw the earth science room and the "snakes of Iowa." They liked that, but the youngest wouldn't step into the bat cave once the recorded screeches started. They don't know this, but a live astronaut is going to be there next Thursday. They might be going as a surprise. It will partly depend on if the wife can bring outside food. Really, $30 for 3 at lunch? But a great day all around.

Roll for SAN loss. No wait, just subtract it all.

No matter what, it's always my fault. If I don't do it, that's wrong. If I do it, it's done wrong (and no credit for trying).

I've been thinking Dr. Wells would become Reverse Flash since the second episode, but I haven't trusted Dr. Wells since the end of the first episode. I've also toyed with that being a red herring as Dr. Wells turning out to be the villain seems way too obvious. He clearly has something to hide, but he's also methodical and seeks to protect Barry. Then I considered that him being too obvious makes me discount him as the villain. A classic case of misdirection. I never read Flash comics, so I know little about his enemies, especially their real names. I knew of Capt. Cold, Grodd, and Reverse Flash/Professor Zoom, but I can't think of any others. I also hadn't connected Eddie to Eobard. There's some drama, conflict, tension there with Eddie. At some point, I'll give up trying to figure out whos who ahead of time and just enjoy the show as it unfolds. Yeah, right!

Who has said that? I've been trying to keep myself away from potential spoilers and just stick to the show. The wife did say something this morning that she would be okay with time travel but not a predestination paradox (he goes back to kill her because he has already done so). She finds alternate realities confusing (don't we all).

My wife likes this show. It's the romance angle between Barry and Iris. Of course, she also said, "He should have gone for Felicity. Take the sure bet. I mean, who wears their little black dress to trivia night?" So tonight we were talking about "The Flash is Born" after watching it. She's not much into sci-fi otherwise (this is 14 years in progress). With what I think is being set up to happen (though it could be a red herring, I admit), I was having to explain the trousers of time to her tonight. Yeah, my bad. Shouldn't have gone there. I'm now hoping they don't go that way. She said she couldn't suspend her disbelief that much. And that would be tragic if she didn't want to watch the show with me.

My eldest has two related medical conditrions that each require a different specialist. He had a checkup with each of them yesterday. Both doctors said he's doing great! One looked at his bloodwork and said, "you know what this blood marker means. It came back less than 2!" (Normal is less than 10. Less than 2 means undetectable to the test.) He sees the other doctor for intestinal issues. That doctor said, "Wait. You just said he went on his own? And this is becoming normal? You're down from three enemas a day to one? That's amazing!"

1.5 years ago, our black car overheated and gave up the ghost. We were out of town when it happened and had to buy a replacement right away. That car has been giving us a little transmission trouble for while and yesterday the fuel pump went out. With the transmission, it's really not a good investment to fix it and without the pump working, we can't sell it. So I get to start looking for a replacement. Yippee.

Got to watch the second episode tonight. Enjoyed it. I've never kept up with Flash in the comics, so this is all coming new to me. Thanks, Ternaugh, AdBlockerPlus has made the show watchable.

This is how the conversation must have gone. P1: We have this program that runs just fine on one person's computer, but more people need to use it. P2: How many? P1: Oh, all engineers enterprise wide. P2: So, the data needs to be on the network. P1: Right, but ain't nobody got time to turn the desktop app into a web app. That would be best. P2: Well, until we have the time, how about we just tweak a few things and put that Access program out on the network. We can have a consultant come in and update it. Of course, he won't leave any helpful comments in the code for us, and will make it a maze of VB calls, and untracable routines, but it'll work. People can access it from their desk by a link but all the data will be in one place. What can go wrong?

And that was it! I shall watch the second episode when I have free time in the evening. Thank you, Ternaugh!

Oh, how I wish. I'll have to see if I installed AdBlock. I used to have it, then I removed it*, and may not have put it back since that situation changed. I'll check that next time I have the chance. My wife's machine streams things the way you describe. She has Win7 (with AdBlock), I have Win8. When I try to stream something from MyLifetime for her, I often have to reload several times before it begins. Thank you for the thought! *I developed for a company that put ads on our customer's websites when they requested. I had to be sure they were displaying correctly. I no longer work there, but forgot about putting AdBlocker back on.

Watching the first episode on stream right now. Enjoying the episode, hating the streaming experience. Every set of commercials, I have to reload the page and go through the prior commercials to get to the next point. It's almost enough to kill it for me.

Had a collision of searches on Amazon the other day. I was looking at sci-fi books while my wife had been looking at Lego sets for the boys earlier that day. Recommended for me: Steampunk Lego book.

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who count in binary and those who don't.

My sons were watching an episode of little House on the Prairie. Pa was helping a young widow with home repairs in exchange for her unneeded china. This was to be a surprise. However, the girls saw him at her house, and Pa was very evasive. One of the girls described her (after Pa left) as "a Black Widow." My youngest said, "Natasha!"

Are you willing to look in Iowa? We have some openings in the IT department of my company. It's a great company and department.

Bolt and the rest of Garret's Crew see that it is Monstrous Regiment and expect to have this wrapped up in minutes. Quake would even make a remark about sitting this one out since we won't need any heavy muscle. After MR gets away with the loot, Null Space would try and fail to trace them. Then the Crew started looking for how they got those powerups. Garret would have his suspicions on who would be behind it, and he would put out feelers amongst his contacts on the street. He's suspect Walker to be behind it (Walker was a multimillionaire who funded genetic research hoping to take humanity to the next step of evolution). He'd figure that Walker had turned to technology as the next step. Bolt would start searching the Net (and his contacts there) for his part of the investigation. All names are from the team.

Earlier today, I read this piece (which also comes up with the google search above). It's the "defamatory" way that makes me pause. What might they consider defamatory? The game starts becoming real to the ex-gamer. While looking at his old char sheet, he jokes about an event causing him to lose a SAN roll and the sheet changes before his eyes. One morning he wakes up in Arkham, Mass, 1923. This is, of course, a bad thing. But would it be considered defamatory seeing as that is the kinda thing I can see a module about? That might be too good to not use! I'm still open to hearing other ideas and comments, please.

I'm working on a Cthulhu mythos-related short story. In the story, I want a game like CoC to play a part. The main character is a gamer who played it a while back. Then I became concerned about legal issues. I can mention anything from HPL's stories without fear as he released them into the public domain so that others could build on it. However, this isn't parody, so I can't name the game CoC, any modules, events or characters that are first used in the modules. I'm perfectly okay with this in principle. However, as the character played the game and his old character sheet and SAN rules actually play a pivotal role in the unfolding plot, I've gotten myself into a corner. I believe I can refer to his SAN score and other stats without worry. It's the name of the game that I'm stuck on. I need a name that a reader would identify as mythos-related but it can't be Call of Cthulhu or similar trademarked name like Trail of Cthulhu. Can anyone help me? Thank you.