My schedule looks ready to go. This semester, I'm taking composition lessons, 16th Century Counterpoint, History of Music Theory, and Pedagogy of Music Theory I. Today, I have the last two classes, and I also have to take care of some leftover errands.

I talked to one of my old roommates last night and found that things are going smoothly with the Marching Virginians and the new roommates in the apartment. Kitty now has a supporting cast of a caged bird and a big bunny. Strangely enough, the bunny and cat play together and chase each other around the apartment. The bird, however, is naturally marked as an appetizer. It'll be good for the cat to get some exercise though -- cramped summer living conditions and overindulgence made her a little snooty and plump.

Off to the music building I go... I'll try and write some about my classes tomorrow.

It's interesting not having any classes on Tuesday and Thursday, almost like I'm on permanent holiday. With so much time to use or lose, these days will either be best thing ever for my thesis, or the bane of my existence. Today, I got in some practicing, some composing, and some gaming, as well as some more memorized names and faces. I've got all the students who where on the original roster memorized now so it shouldn't be too hard a step to learn the late arrivals and majors and such. I'm looking forward to class tomorrow although we probably won't do much heavyweight work. Since the university observes Labor Day down here, most of the hardcore learning will start next Wednesday. They might as well have started school a week later.

Dungeons and Dragons (3.2MB, MP3): If you've never heard this parody, and have ever known anyone who was into tabletop roleplaying or fantasy geekdom, you've got to listen to this.
Jedi is now a religion

Audience Participation Day: Complete the Sentence

Simply go to the comments section to complete these eight sentences and wait for the hilarity to ensue!

1) There ought to be a law against...

2) Michael Vick belongs in...

3) I hate having to choose between...



4) In the future when tasty food is replaced completely by vitamin pills, I will...

5) The thing about babies is that...

6) Everything would be alright if only...



7) The only thing worse than a politician is...

8) My life is full of...

Happy Birthday Mike Buns!

Audience Participation Day

I've posted in the past about how bad the Family Circus has become over the course of forty-eight years worth of cartoons. It's not its fault, necessarily -- if I ever make it to fifty years of daily updates on my website, I'm sure I'll be just as bad as Family Circus, relying on repetitive jokes about how cool the Internet is or how Daddy might be a pedophile.

In fifty years, I'll be seventy-eight with hands crippled by Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and the remnants of my mental acuity puddled in my sinuses, having melted away from the daily grind of finding new ways to print HELLO WORLD on my screen. Like Bil Keane, my posts will be dictated to my son, Thor, who will do the inking and the typing himself. Roughly half the posts will be doddering ramblings about how I like bacon, while the other half will be YouTube videos of various readers dancing to the Boobies song.

In the spirit of declining relevance, the goal of today's post will be to improve two Family Circus cartoons taken from the 1968 book, I Need a Hug (which is currently sitting on my shelf in the basement). There are no prizes involved -- just post your new caption for either circle in the Comments section!

Audience Participation Day: What are you doing?

Brianne just moved back to Virginia. Kelley just joined Facebook. The world has been turning like a two-hundred pound hog on a spit, and everyone's doing their own thing.

For today's post, share a little bit about who you are and what you do in the Comments section. Have you moved since the last time I talked to you? Do you have a new job? Have you popped out any more babies? Any vacations or major events approaching? Do you like how things are going? Be as deep or as flippant as you'd like, but catch me up on your life!

Lurkers are welcome to chime in too! I've recently seen an uptick in regular readers from inside the Beltway, silent types who are obviously envious of the Sterling VIP lifestyle.

Vocabulary Friday

A few snapshots of our recent two-player games of Scrabble. Thankfully, for the meta-game where you invent a story with the words on the board, BONED and VULVA were in different games. I like the cut of your jib.

It should also be noted that VULVA was one U away from being VUVUZELA.

List Day: Stuff Going On

• On Saturday, I started development work on the next version of DDMSence, in order to keep my open source street cred from expiring.


• I'm currently in the middle of watching Breaking Bad (S2), My Name is Earl (S1), and rewatching 24 (S4) while on the treadmill.


• I'm in the middle of cleaning up the basement for upcoming barbeques and potential Halloween parties, since it hasn't been used all year long.


• I loaned my six pound Mickey Mouse bowling ball from junior high school to the son of our neighbours. It was just gathering dust in the closet in a makeshift bowling ball bag composed of an Eastpak backpack with a broken zipper and a piece of foam.


• I stopped playing Diablo 3 before the 1.0.4 patch and haven't come back to it. I just downloaded the original Fallout, a series which I've never played before, and will give it a spin this evening.


• We ate out at both Jackson's and Toltecos this weekend to make up for all of the egg drop soup and buffalo-onion meatballs I made for dinner last week.


• Anna's youngest sister, Becca, who wasn't even alive when Michael Dukakis ran for president, is expecting. Should there be a nuclear catastrophe in our future, we'd better hope that the Catholics survive, because they'll be very good at repopulating the shattered husk of the Earth.


• I've settled on a new schedule for blog posts: Monday will be day-to-day types of posts, Tuesday will be music-related, Wednesday will be old stories and memories, Thursday will remain Review Day, and Friday will continue to be whatever I happen to think up that takes minimal effort to post.

What have you been up to these days?

Random Chart Day: Dining Out in 2012

The chart below shows all of the restaurants I ate at and paid for by debit card in 2012. The larger pie slices represent a higher amount spent, not necessarily more visits.

Memory Day: Snapshots

I took this picture fourteen years ago, on August 27, 2000. It was just before the opener game against Georgia Tech, and the weather behaved just long enough to get everyone seated. Right at kickoff, a sudden downpour with lightning pursued the fans into the concrete underbelly of Lane Stadium, where we huddled through a game delay. It eventually became a cancellation as the fields had become too muddy to proceed, so the three of us returned to our Foxridge apartment for Totino's pizza and Woodchuck ciders.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Ascension:
This Syfy miniseries (which ultimately was not picked up for an actual season) tells the tale of a 100-year voyage to Mars that departed in the 1950s and is now halfway through its voyage, with the original generation dying off and a new generation born on the spaceship coming into power. It's a mixed bag, having all of the tropes necessary for an interesting sci-fi story that's more than just a space battle, but they're assembled in a very workman-like manner without enough finesse. The pseudoscience is horrible, and the set designers seem to have forgotten that the group came from the 1950s after the pilot episode, but the political infighting and plot mysteries are well-done and get better as the series progresses. It's generally a fun watch, if only to see Bobby Cobb from Cougartown as the ship's captain. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

Sherlock, Season Two:
The goodness graph for this season looks like a right-handed checkmark. The first episode was passable, the second exceedingly boring, and the third made it all worthwhile. The show is only engaging when the villain, Moriarty, is a primary character, and his absence from any given episode is very noticeable. I would even recommend only watching the third (and final) episode of this season. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson:
This seminal 1992 sci-fi book describing a virtual reality Internet before its time starts strong and whimpers out. The first chapter is a compelling introduction to the world and jargon at large, but the jumps in time and personality-lacking protagonist, Hiro (the katana-wielding hacker), muddy the waters. Extended sections of the middle of the book involve Hiro talking to his virtual assistant learning about ancient Sumerians, and these monologues go on for so long that it feels like the author was so proud of his research that he didn't want to edit. I ultimately ended up skimming these chapters but it didn't matter in the end, as the plot became too tangled to follow or care about and imploded in a confusing cloud of swapped alliances and hard-to-differentiate supporting characters.

Final Grade: C-

Witcher 3:
Following my First Impressions post about this RPG, I ended up playing it solidly for another month or so. It was fun and enoyable to play until the point where it wasn't. Ultimately, there was just too much story to sit through, and I felt the need to be playing more and watching fewer (thankfully skippable) cutscenes. I didn't feel like I was making consistent progress and finally moved on after seeing less than 20% of the plot (but spending many fun hours getting there).

Final Grade: B-

Weekend Wrap-up

We spent a long weekend at a swanky cabin in Strasburg, VA, just 2 miles down I-81 (which is just about as far as anyone is willing to travel down I-81).

Maia enjoyed floating in the 70 degree pool although Rebecca was not so thrilled.

Maia also enjoyed expressing her artistic talent on the neverending shelf paper art station hidden behind a secret door under the house.

With Tammy and Zoe, we made delicious, extravagant breakfasts and dinners, and never had to drive off the mountain beyond an initial grocery run.

On Sunday, the ladies took a steep hike down the gravel road into the valley below, while I stayed behind and did absolutely nothing.

Even More Deep Thoughts Day

Another post I want to preserve from Facebook:

August 26, 2021

Posts against vaccines and masks often have a tone of defiance or persecution. You can't change my mind!" "This is a slippery slope!" "We're standing up for what's right and If you think differently, you must be our enemy!"

Am I your enemy? I have a few more grey hairs now but I'm the same guy you once trusted, respected, or called a friend 10, 15, or 20 years ago. Maybe I rode bikes with you, went to college with you, played in a band with you, or even attended your wedding. You KNOW me.

So when I interrupt my uncontroversial stream of baby pics and nerd jokes to be serious (exactly 10 times in my 16 years on Facebook[1]), it's not because I'm out to get you. I don't think I'm better than you and I'm not trying to win. I don't want to destroy your freedom or religion. I don't hate you.

I post about COVID-19 prevention and the shifty tactics of social media and search engines because I don't want ANY of my friends or their families to join the 633,000 deaths recorded in the past two years. I don't want ANY kids becoming orphans or growing up with long-term disability when the tools to mitigate this suffering are readily available. And when this pandemic is finally behind us, I don't want to end up with a broken society of two tribes that can't coexist, where a person's worth is summarily dismissed over an opinion.

If you reject what I have to say, at least understand that I'm searching in good faith for the compassionate choices that keep the largest number of people alive and healthy. No one (including me) is any smarter today than a decade ago -- we're just drowning in data. Truths, half-truths, lies, misinformation, disinformation -- it's a tidal wave that overwhelms us and encourages emotional responses over logic. I'm doing my imperfect best to listen to all opinions instead of unfriending, to read opposing news sources that don't just tell me what I want to hear, and to change my mind when new information warrants it. I hope you are too.

Thank you for listening!