Fitocracy

Thought for the day: The journey of a thousand miles is easier to complete with regular milestones.

As part of my plan to get in shape, I've joined Fitocracy. Have a lookie, maybe join up. http://ftcy.co/xqfpHa Now if you'll excuse me, I'm exhausted from reaching level 5.

Back In The Saddle Again

Thought for the day: The Super Bowl is a marketer's Super Bowl.

No, for the record, the Thought is not an Ice Cream Koan. Super Bowl Sunday is a big day for the Marketing world. You know all those people who say, "I only watch it for the commercials"? You realise how much your average adman would KILL to have people that devoted any other day of the year? This day can make or break a brand for the year; and a year is an awful long time in business.

This year was actually fairly mediocre, and our sports colleagues handily out did us with what will go down in history as the Tush Down. Some highlights:

Hasbro opened with the trailer for Battleship in the first quarter. They came in hard and heavy with Aliens, Explosions, Action Closeups and Liam Neeson, and it played well to the crowd. But, Battleship? Really? BATTLESHIP?
         Coyote: You gotta be shitting me.
         Great Spirit: Great Spirit is not a shitter.

- Coyote Blue, by Christopher Moore(highly recommended)

But who am I to judge. Oh, that's right, I'm an educated movie-goer, that's who I am. But Hasbro brought it back around with the new G.I. Joe trailer, announcing the involvement of Duane Johnson and Bruce Willis, with a shot of Cobra Commander finally in his proper uniform; a well played rope-a-dope, in hindsight. Finally, George Lucas once more brings forth feelings of dire conflict among his fanbase by releasing Star Wars once more to theatres, this time in 3D. Will we yowl, screech and curse his name? Yes. Will we divide into factions, waging bloody feud over the validty of this version of the films? Of course. Will we still line up, in costume, to see them? DAMN STRAIGHT.

The Cola Wars hashed out their ancient blood-feud, with Coca~Cola leading in with periodic flips to a pair of polar bears watching the game; surprising pathos, there, actually. Pepsi provided a star-studded rejoinder set in the cola-fueled decadence of The Court of King Elton John I, only to morph it into a magnificent revolutionary tale of the tyrant's overthrow. R-E-S-P-E-C-T indeed.

The Detroitlanders set their arms against the Foreign Car Hanse, and both armies left the field of battle bloodied but standing. From the shores of Lake Eerie, Chevy voiced it's own dire predictions for the coming 2012 end of the Age, and took the opportunity to nip Ford's helm on the way back from the tilt. VW, in response, launched a mighty pincer manoeuvre, opening with an adipose-addled dog deciding to get in shape, only the swerve to a Galaxy Far Far Away where a well-known Sith Lord reminded everybody just Who Your Daddy Is. Toyota launched a rather unimpressive display for its Camry brand, barely flying its pennants in a half-hearted foray into the field. The strongest blows were struck by a merciless and valiant charge on behalf of Chrysler. Finding last year's use of Eminem to be effective in launching their "Imported From Detroit" campaign, but not as much as hoped, this year's sermon was delivered from the mouth of Clint Eastwood. For sincerely and effectively selling the salvation ticket, I say that Chrysler held the day.

Also, Go Giants.

Bill

Settling into a routine

Thought for the day: More people would eat healthy if McDonalds wasn't So. Damn. CHEAP.

So I'm back at school, Thank God. No updates this last week or so as I settled into a routine. Regular updates resume nowish.

A few things that have come to pass since last update.

1. I now play DnD with my Piggott group on Skype every Sunday. It's pretty cool.
2. I'm attempting to get into shape this semester. By this I mean I'm planning on a diet and workout plan that are designed to build lean muscle mass. What I've learned from this: healthy food is EXPENSIVE! I mean, just buying veggies and fruit nearly bankrupts me. And let's not even speak of the vitamins and supplements the plan advises me to take(the plan's statement on  supplements is "you don't have to, but if you don't you won't see results as fast or as dramatic").
3. Related to 2: I need a job, desperately.
4. Related to 3: I need a car, desperately.
5. Related to 2-4: Shameless plug- Note the donation button in the corner. ;D
6. Among the classes I'm taking this year is "Legal Environment of Business". It's at 8am, but I'm trying to get up early this semester anyway; see 2. The professor is the county judge. I am, apparently, the teacher's pet. Why? Because out of the entire 20+ persons in the class, I was the only one who had read the Constitution. So, yeah, I'm enjoying the class. My other classes are looking up, too. Yes, even Stats.
7. Still searching for an internship. No news on that front.

That's about it so far. More tomorrow, maybe, or less. All depends on how the day goes. It's Accounting and Earth Science, so don't hope for much.

Later,
Bill

Argleblargtravelgargletired.

Thought for the day: When one person says "I'll go to register at (x) time, when there are fewer people", then it's smart. When everyone says it, it rather defeats the purpose.

Back at school. Exhausted from travelling five hours to get here, plus post-registration today. Classes start at 8am tomorrow; will let you know how it goes.

SOPA's bad, mmkay?

Thought for the day: "If SOPA does pass, we will have to depend on the judgement of well informed, internet-savvy judges to not jump the gun.Those exist, right?" tweeted by Dan Shive on Dec 14, 2012, just before the first round of SOPA voting.


Ok. So, I posted this to my Facebook wall last night. Sparky then asked me what SOPA actually was, since she had looked it up but was still a bit confused. Thus, since I haven't posted in a couple of days(they can be summarised as Cold, Wet, And Boring: A Play in Two Acts) I thought I'd give an overview of

1. What SOPA is
2. The Protests(specifically the blackouts)
3. And the latest news on SOPA's pass/fail status.

Let's start with what SOPA is. SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, an bill currently before the United States House of Representatives. There is a competing bill before the Senate, the Protect IP Act. The problems with thte bills are largely similar, so we're going to stick with SOPA here.

The idea behind SOPA is as follows:

• The Internet, as regards copyrighted materials, is a bit like an Old West boom town between Sheriffs: Law is an abstract concept, and the most responsible people are the ones running the brothel.
• People in general, and Americans in particular, should be able to buy and sell their works on the Internet without fear that they will be undercut by some pirate site.

Now, we can all agree that the intentions here are good. Very good. I'm sure Lucifer appreciates the paving stones for the Road to Hell.

See, the bill is catastrophically, unforgivably, horribly worded. The problems with SOPA are, in brief:

• The bill bans anything which might be used to block copyright enforcement. Remember all those proxy servers that helped preserve anonymity of posters during the Arab Spring uprisings? Illegal, under SOPA.
• The bill threatens user created content sites. Cloud services, Youtube, Flicker; they're all at risk, because some users might use them to disseminate copyrighted materials. But what about when those copyrighted materials belong to the user, not some outside company or person? Well...
• Fair Trials are right out the window with SOPA. If you hold a copyright, and you CLAIM that someone has uploaded your intellectual property, the act ASSUMES you to be telling the truth and allows the Dept. of Justice to have your site blocked. You can, of course, hire a lawyer and contest it, but if the website is your primary source of income, and it's now blocked, well... You Are Screwed.
• The damn thing won't actually stop pirates. The wording makes it clear that the writers of the bill have no idea how the technology they're regulating works; in the first place, they don't know the difference between an IP address and a DNS (Caveat: though it was one of the major flaws in the bill, the DNS blocking has been removed from the bill. There are, of course, plenty of others)

I could go on, but if you want more, that's why God gave us Wikipedia. Speaking of: the bill resumes consideration when the House comes back from recess on January 18. On that day, in response to this nonsense, Reddit intends to black out. From 8am to 8pm, Eastern Standard Time, Reddit.com will be unavaiable. Instead there will be a series of links and statements about the dangers of SOPA. The following sites have confirmed to blackout with Reddit(source):
Reddit.com
Tucows.com
The entire Cheezburger Network  Thus Saith Ceiling Cat: YOU CAN NO HAZ SOPA.
Destructoid.com
Hacktivist group, Anonymous
Red 5 Studios, developer of the Firefall MMO
Mojang.com and Popular MMO, Minecraft
NLB Creations
Webmaster community Admin Forums
Web design company, Skytemple.com
Gaming site Video Game Generation
Right Angle Recording
All sites in Major League Gaming’s network
GamingBus.com
Errata Security
XDA Developers
Gaming site, GOG.com
Hey It’s Free!
Harder Blogger Faster
Colossal Mind
Sonic Retro
BrentAnderson.info
Working It Out
e-cloudy.com
Seibertron.com
NewGrounds
Through the Eyes of a Pirate
Cynical Brit
Platform Nation
Digital Suicide
GOOD Evening
Rage Maker
FreakOutNation
TheLeakyWiki
Doxie Lovers Club
Twitpic – They won’t be going completely black, but will be posting censored versions of their site.
Age of Coins
A Softer World
This Is Why Im Broke
Cake Wrecks
Dance Top 40
Code Labs
MediaMyriad.com


Also, Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter are all very publicly against SOPA, and will probably do something similar(see Twitpic above).


So, that's the basics of SOPA and why it's bad. You want more, go read around, there's plenty on it. Heck, go read the bill itself. If you want to get involved, remember that Blackout Day is Jan. 18, but the bill probably won't go to vote for some time afterwards. Plenty of time to complain to your congresspersons; I did, and got back responses, too (One wants to scrap it wholesale, the other wants to rewrite it).

In the meantime, good luck, God speed, and may the Schwartz be with you (while I'm still allowed to say that under copyright).
Bill.

An Embuggerance

Thought for the day: There are, generally speaking, two ways of dealing with a crushing blow: Despair, "Alas! My dream is crushed."; and Indignation, "I BEG your pardon?! Crush MY dreams? Oh, I don't THINK so sir!"

So, last night I didn't post. The reason is that I didn't get the Google BOLD internship. Alas. So, yesterday I spent much of the morning and afternoon feeling sorry for myself.

And then I thought, you know what? F@#$ this shit. I'm going to find ANOTHER internship out in California for the summer, one that pays anywhere-from-nearly-as-well-to-just-as-well,-because-there's-not-a-lot-that-pay-better.

So I spent the night applying for internships instead. I applied to about 3 so far; one with Adobe(HR and Marketing), one with a pharmaceutical company(HR dept), and one with LeadAmerica (Team Leader position).

And today? Nothing happened. Sooo....Peace out, and wish me luck.
Bill

Badger Badger, Motherf@#$.

Thought for the day: Sometimes, God's in a funny mood, and you get to roll a natural 20 when it would be most epic.


Today was D&D. I killed a dragon with a badger.

This is mitigated by the following factors:

1. Said badger was in fact a Celestial Badger, a bit stronger(but not much) than your average badger.
2. The party tank had already dropped it down to only 1HP.
3. I did not actually know that at the time, nor did I intend to slay dragon with said badger; the intent was to provide a distraction so the Sorcerer could fling off another spell.

Nevertheless, I turned to my dungeon master, with nothing but my remaining Bardic Performances and a Wand of Summon Monster I. The rough transcript is as follows:

"So, the limit to the wand is the monster only stays 1 round, right?"
"Right."
"But I can place that monster anywhere I want within the 50ft range of the spell, right"
"Right, so long as you can see it." (This last was in the DM's I-know-you-are-planning-something-and-I-am-intrigued voice).
"I can't see within the sleet-storm the cleric used to pin the dragon down, though."
"Yep."
"I can see the dragon's face, can't I?"

It came down to a roll of the dice. Anything short of a Natural 20 wouldn't make it.

And the Lord said...
And the LORD said...
And The LORD Said...

Epic Win.

Glory to God in the highest, especially in His aspect as Master of Probability.

Yours in FLAWLESS VICTORY,

Bill