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

Show Some Love

Thought for the day: One good turn deserves another.

No real post today, can't really think of anything. So, instead, here's a link to Autumn Brontide, which has been linking here a lot. Lauren, this is as close as I'll ever come to paying for free advertising. The reason being, 'free' means I don't pay for it.

Much love to all my readers,
Bill

Left My Heart without even going

Thought for the day: Love, being an idea, is strongest in the mind.

I've fallen in love with California, especially the Bay Area.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, in California. But, I ended up falling anyway. I know where it started, of course.

 
See, I'm in the process of applying for Google's BOLD Program- Building Opportunities for Leadership Development. I'd really, really like to get this, because even if I don't get hired for Google afterwards, I can put it on my resume and get hired...pretty much anywhere else, actually. This would, among other things, mean moving the the Bay Area for the summer. So, naturally, I started looking into the Bay Area and California in general.

His Imperial Majesty The Emperor Of These United States

As those who know me personally will recall, my personal hero was a San Franciscan, His Majesty Emperor Norton. I shan't go into the details here, at least not in this post, but suffice it to say that it had already predisposed towards liking the place; it has a reputation as a haven for weirdos like myself. Silicon Valley is, of course, the Great Geekopolis, so points there as well. Then I find, in the course of my researches, that San Francisco and San Jose both tend to rank in the Top 25, if not the Top 10, places for new grads.

Actually, let's veer off on a tangent for a moment. Let's talk about the job market for persons age 15-24. Unemployment for this group is anywhere from 15% to 20%, with the U.S. Dept. of Labor ranking it somewhere in the 18% range. Oh, yes, we can't find jobs anywhere - oh, but yes we can, because those numbers also includes high school and college dropouts. For those with a degree, it's about 4.5%; yes, finding a job is hard, but it's ALWAYS hard. The universe does not fall into your lap, sad but true.

Anyway, back to my Californication. And there, you see, is when I really got hooked. For a lark I started listening to songs about California and SF. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Train both figured heavily. The lyrics and images kept swimming around my head. I fell, head over heels, with California, sight unseen.

YES, I'm aware of the catastrophic problems out there. SF is dirty, the homeless and vagrant problems(distinct but overlapping) are immense, and God help the transit system. And that doesn't even SPEAK to the immense cost of living as compared to here. But, you know what?

I'm sick and tired of small towns. I'm sick and tired of small people who think small and use small words. I've had enough, I want to, just once, get out to the Big City by the Big Sea(which I have YET to see, EVER!). And I will pray to a Big God when I kneel in the Big Church!

(And snow white pillows, for my big fat head. ;))