random incoherence and infantile meanderings

• Fear the Boot 41: The Combat System
• Fear the Boot Interview Episode 2: Mike West
• Fear the Boot 42: Wounds, healing, and death
• Game Master Show 48: Prime Time Adventures pt 1
• Firefly Talk 64: August 27th 2008
• Buzz Out Loud 797: The superbug of piracy
• PC Gamer UK: Showdown Podcast
• GFW Radio 08/20/2008

• The Game Master Show 48: Prime Time Adventures pt 1
• Firefly Talk 63 August 17th 2008
• Form Letter Rejection Theatre: Regarding the Barry Fitzpatrick’s Navigator
• Fanboyhell 17: Jared Axelrod Dark Knight Interview
• Buzz Out Loud 795: New Zealand judge misses the entire point of Internet

Mr. Chris Lester of the Metamor City podcast series is a new biology teacher for ARISE HS, a small charter school in California. The mission there is to serve children who will be the first to attend college and they need funds to equip the biology labs with glassware, visual aids, preserved specimens and other educational gear. Last year, their first year, they obtained electronic balances and basic dissection kits, but no other equipment yet.

ARISE is a registered not-for-profit charitable organization and all donations are tax-deductible. Thank you for your generosity!

Today is Mur Lafferty‘s “Playing for Keeps” run on Amazon.  Basically, there is a technique for ramping your sales rank on Amazon up real high by having a large group of purchases in a short period of time.  And “The Tribe” has been running through our podcast authors as they get publishing deals and basically doing our best to get some noise going.  So I have purchased a copy of “Playing for Keeps.”

I think I’ll like it.  It’ll be weird to actually read her voice instead of hearing it piped in the way I usually do.  Then again, I’m not real familiar with her fiction.  I love her tone, but usually that is form her podcasts “I Should Be Writing” and “Geek Fu Action Grip.”

Anyhow, “Playing for Keeps” is a super hero novel about the other guys.  The ones with somewhat less useful abilities, like our heroine Keepsie.  her power is that no one can take her stuff away.  That’s all.  No flying or throwing cars or seeing through steel.  I like odd stories and I like comic book style hero stories.  But I really did not like the “Wild Card” series, so I am excited and a mite nervous to see how I feel about “Playing for Keeps” once I’ve actually read it.

I’m pretty confident that I am going to enjoy this tale, but if you want to taste before you buy Mur has made “Playing for Keeps” into an audio book as well as a PDF, both of which are currently available for free.  So check it out, and then go do your part by purchasing a copy today!

• Denver Post’s Lyrics Undercover
  • 47: Brick – Ben Folds Five
  • 41: Back On The Chain Gang – The Pretenders
  • 109: Brown Eyed Girl
  • 106: Walk Like An Egyptian
  • 113: Jane Says
• The Command Line Podcast
  • 2008-08-17 News
  • 2008-08-20 Hacking 101: Errors and Exceptions
• The Bear’s Grove 45: Rob Bohl and Misspent Youth
• Critical Myth 19: The “4400″ Third Season Post-Mortem
• The Dragon Page Cover to Cover
  • 322A: Charles Stross (AWESOME VOICE!)
  • 321B: Creating a Feeling
  • 323A: Franchises, Tie-Ins, and Zombies, oh my!
• Being Healthy for Busy People 7: Exercise Psychology, Salt and Coffee French Press
• Buzz Out Loud 793: 19 and still single?
• 12 Volt Theater: BS 6.5 with Nathan Lowell plus my parsec picks!
• Adventures in SciFi Publishing 60: Gary Philips, Doselle Young, Lilith Saintcrow, and Eldon Thompson
• The 1UP Show 149: 08/08/2008
• Geek Radio Daily August 21st 2008

I came in to work early today to cover for the 2nd shift technician.  On my voicemail from the 1st shift maintence guy was the normal “worked on this, fixed that, this broke, etc” message that ended with a highly confusing bit.  Roughly translated, my take on it was

“Worked on the line on second shift playing with stations around shorten suction hose tonight everything work well.”

(Unfortunately, my typing skills have degraded to the point where I cannot keep pace with a person talking. )

I went over to the line in question and found that the situation there was actually just as confusing and messed up as my voicemail message had been.  One station had been moved over a little this way and another station had been swapped to the other side and… I sat there and stared at the lines and angles and the way the material would move through the machine.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  The end result of what must have been hours of work is that it’s all changed, it all looks different, and yet the path that matters is still the same as it was before.  So I fail to see how this is supposed to help us run better.  I don’t see any way that this will improve the situation.

Especially since the problem area was untouched.  The big mystery that has been stumping everyone… yeah, nothing done over there.

I’m supposed to “be a team player and support new changes” but, what the heck?