You are a narrative writer. Usually a writer of
stories rather than poetry, you grew up reading
Shakespeare's less popular and heard of
plays--like King Lear or the Henry series. Your
writing contains a certain order and
organization--be it chronological or otherwise.
If you are to write poetry, it has to convey a
logical (or perhaps unreal) story with some
sort of order behind it.


What's YOUR Writing Style?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Uriel. You're most like the ArchAngel of
Transformation. You like teaching, and
bringing the joy of learning new stuff to
others. You have limited patience for stupid
people despite having an amazing amount of
patience otherwise.


Which ArchAngel are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

---

Ottava rima? Me? That can't be right!    Too frivolous? But tut, there's no such thing! Let others ponder thoughts of wrong and right,    Or sit and think how much they love the spring; I'd rather spend my time in gleeful spite,    Or maybe laugh, or maybe sit and sing. Besides, it might be fun to be inspiring - But surely it would get so very tiring. What Poetry Form Are You?

---

I should write my own quiz... The question is, how would i substantiate the information. Obviously a well learned Neural Network AI would work, but there's no way I could come up with enough people to train it properly. If everyone in my frind group contributed, I would only need 80 more people to contribute to get enough for it to even be able to guess... If my site was more well known, I'd be able to build a double edged sword and have it teach itself what the appropriate answers to the quiz are by interspersing the hard line questions it would need answered to get the job done. For example:

If I where a tree I would pick:
1. An Oak, Tall and proud
2. A spruce, short but sturdy
3. An Aspen, limber yet firm
4. A willow, soft and spread out.

If I had to describe my morality, I would say that I am:
1. Very Moral
2. Kinda Moral
3. Not Very Moral
4. Immoral

And then build a ratio pattern from an ANova analysis of the seemingly pointless questions and the hardline questions, then just drop the hardlines and go from there...

Oh and BTW... I disagree with the poetry one... Oh well...

So much coding, so little time.

Mood: Ambivilant

I'm a Gin & Tonic, discover your ALcoHoLiC personality!

---

Ok, so I don't drink, but apparently people seem to like to tie themselves to a persona that is suggested by an alcoholic drink, I don't get what's so unique about being tied to Mineral Water and Hard Liquor, but hey, I love personality quizzes.

So here's another one. :)

---

You have wings of STEEL. No one's really
sure why, but at this point in your life you've
shut off emotion to the point of extreme
apathy. You are cold and indifferent much of
the time...or perhaps you're just a good
pretender. Next to impossible to get close to,
even those who do never see the real you. It's
entirely possible that YOU don't even know the
real you. You have a certain fascination or
attraction to destruction on a massive scale -
disasters, perhaps even death or the concept of
the Apocalypse. Because you hold so much
inside, one day you're simply going to snap.
Then the mask will fall away, and your true
wings will be revealed. Until then you will
deal with whatever comes your way in icy bitter
silence and acceptance. On the positive side,
you are fearless and immeasurably strong - not
much can crack through your defenses. You
intrigue people, who can't help but wonder why
you're the way you are. A loner and one who
spends much of their time brooding and
contemplating life and death - you are a time
bomb waiting to explode and create some
destruction of your own.


*~*~*Claim Your Wings - Pics and Long Answers*~*~*
brought to you by Quizilla

---

Ah, how interesting... Compare that with my blog postings... ^.^ (And no, I answered the quiz as truthfully as I could. Retrying for a more desireable answer, or biasing your answers for a specific result kinda defeats the purpose. I try to be honest with all the quizzes I take. I mean, what's the point in taking them if you already know what the answer should be?)

In any case, I've been wandering blogland and am finding it very interesting. It seems that imp keeps some very interesting company. Mosy of my friends are too lazy to even post a blog, and the ones that would would be hellishly boring: "Feb 1: I played FFXI today... It was fun; Feb 2: I played FFXI today, it was fun; Feb 3: I went to the market today, then I played FFXI... It was fun." If Cyan made one it'd probably be worth reading. Hmm. But then again I would assume that my blog is probably as uninteresting everyone else's is, not like the one I saw where the author opened up with "Woke up today and I didn't control the world. I'm going to have to work harder on my 'sleep them into submission' plan. I'll try again tonight."

Well, I guess that's all I feel like posting for now. Maybe I'll post again later.

Liquor, Mineral Water, and Iron/Carbon Alloys... Always fun.

Mood: Introspective

Well, after perousing the legal documentation, it seems that, ironically, IBM actually did violate their software licensing agreement with SCO. The question is: did they cause the source code of the Linux kernel to become illegal? That information is dependant on what components of the kernel where contributed by IBM. If SCO's claims are accurate (I'd have to ask the developer responsible for the three sections of code to be sure), then I guess that legally, SCO actually DOES have right to claim that they are due comphensation for the section of code. Especially in the enterprise market where the alleged changes have the most significant effect (multi processor systems with more than 4 processors.) And furthermore, their prices for server computers would be reasonable (If you consider the normal cost of UNIX.) Their client prices are still unreasonable as all of the stolen code really doesn't apply to client type workstations, even corporate class ones.

However, there is a small question of standing. It would seem that the SCO group isn't actually the one that owns UNIX. SCO was actually two companies at the time that they aquired UNIX, and the one that is currently called Tarantella. The SCO group is unaffilliated with Tarantella (Which can be substantiated from direct statements by SCO in their Comment on paragraph 10 of IBM's counter statements.)

Ya, it's a huge pile of convoluted bull crap, but it boils down to IBM Violated their licence with The Santa Cruz Operation, now known as Tarantella. However, the SCO group, who is the one currently sueing, isn't the holder to the rights to UNIX. As for the Linux community itself, this means that there are chunks of the 2.4 kernel that contain what used to be trade secrets. However, the definition of "Trade Secret" is no longer held, and the damages thereby really don't mean squat. However, the copyright held on the source is still valid, and thus the Linux kernel MAY (we don't know if IBM actually contributed anything, but I can't see why not) contain intellectual property that cannot be freely distributed via open source. All of these infringements can only be in version 2.4 and higer of the kernel. The people I would worry about would be the people with AIX on their systems. And even then, only if Tarantella decides the serve notice of a breach in the license. But until then the UNIX license held by IBM is safe because the one served by SCO is meaningless.

What a mess. Bad intellectual property or not, Motoko will continue running the 2.4 kernel. And if Tarantella decides to make a fuss about it, we'll see. But otherwise it's clear that SCO doesn't have any standing.

Well... That was unexpected.

Mood: Torn

Wow the Patriots won... Who cares...

Many much more interesting things happened over the weekend. For example, the martian rover Spirit was fixed. Oppertunity rolled off it's lander, and the MyDoom virus unleashed it payload onto the SCO website.

And that last one is the one I feel like talking about.

I am absolutely FURIOUS at whoever wrote that virus. Don't get me wrong, SCO is clearly making a power play to try and abuse the market. So I'll talk about that for a bit and then move on to why I'm gonna clobber the guy who released the virus. On their (currently temporary) website, I've spent some time reading about what they're claiming in their lawsuit. Turns out that they are attacking the end users, not the distributers. Now it is clear that the dirstributers would be just as much in violation of their intellectual property rights as would be the end users. Red Hat, one of the major distributors, which isn't actually at risk with SCO's claim, in an effort to protect their coustemers, has countered with a suit placing some serious allogations against the SCO group, including unfair business practices and deceptive trade practices. SCO countered it by claiming that these are just "Red Hat is asking the Court to decide general issues between SCO and the entire Linux industry. "¹ As of the last time I checked, the charges filed by Red Hat are not 'general issues', those are some serious legal accusations.
But lets talk for a moment about the specifics of SCO's claim. They claim that 3 segments of code where stolen from the UNIX source base, Non-Uniform Memory Access, Read Copy Update, and The Journal File System. Now, supposedly the theft is only found in the 2.4 and above kernels. But all of these compnents have been in the OS since version 1. This means that for some completely unknown reason, the Linux community spontaneously changed the core components of their operating system code (which had been working fine and often better that UNIX System V) back to the older UNIX System V code. And more than that, they did this on their code as it applies to ALL operating platforms (including the Power PC, whose processing core didn't even exist when System V was written and would be incompatible with the NUMA code from System V.) Maybe I should download the 2.24 kernel source and the 2.2 kernel source and compare them... I wouldn't be at all suprised that they are almost identical, which would clearly invalidate the SCO claim.

And if that wasn't enough, SCO is offering Intellectual Property licenses to people using the Linux kernel. So you can get down to the business of "Paying" them for the rights to use their binary code. Which BTW, they chare $199 for a CLIENT license for those three components. Let's pretend for a moment that they are telling the truth. That would say that all the claims against Microsoft for price gauging with their "Client" OS Windows XP Home are all invalid. Instead, Microsoft should charge $199 for the files VMM.VXD, and NTFS.VXD (Which are the virtual drivers that are the equivilents to what SCO supposedly owns in the 2.4 Linux kernel) and all the other parts should cost extra. Oh... And for a server like my dear Motoko, I'm supposed to pay $699 for it. Well I say piss on that! I can purchase a shiney new copy of Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server for a mere $1500 bucks and get a web server, file manager, shell, network operating system, hardware device drivers, web browser, server management tools, and 5 client licenses for Windows 2000 Workstation too boot. As such it is CLEARLY a blatent act at gouging on SCO's part, and to make matters worse, SCO is trying to gouge a market it doesn't even actually have a claim on.

GRRR....

However, let us now discuss this little MyDoom virus. As much as I would like to get my hands on the wise guy at SCO who would dream up such a stupid claim, I know full well that any attempt to do so would only lead to evidence to support SCO's claim. "Although the death of our dear friend is tragic, it is just proof that they're desperate. It's come to kicking and shoving. Liek a cornered dog, they're making their last grabs at whats left. But we won't let them." And that's all this stupid virus has done. And to make matters worse, it's lead to basic bounty hunting on this idiots head. In this fight, the last thing we need is myrtars. Welcome to the modern day, where dying for the cause makes you a terrorist and attacks against businesses lead to bombings not change. As the McDonalds coffee example show, the only way to change a business is with a multi-million dollar law suit. These little attacks will do nothing but galvinize the community and cause them to have less sympathy for our cause. As such it means we have to be civil about this and approach it from angles that are going to be effective, not destructive...

But every group has it's war hawk. And it will be because of them that we fail.

¹ SCO | Scosource | SCOsource, , Accessed Feb 02, 2004.

Deep breaths... Don't kill anyone... Killing makes things worse... Deep breaths...

Mood: Infuriated

"Erections lasting longer than 4 hours, although rare, require you seek immediate medical attention."

I hear that on a commercial during the SuperBowl, and the only thing I can do is lie on the floor wetting myself cause I'm laughing so hard.

Ah, but anyway, I rented Mario Cart Double Dash, purchased Sonic Heroes, played a bunch of FFXI, and finished my homework. I've got a cold which sucks, but such is life.

Beyond that I'm not feeling very ranty... So I'm gonna go back to my game.

... Achoo!!!! *sniff* ...

Mood: Ill but otherwise eh.

Well, despite the taboo that goes with it, I like playing with dolls...

Ok, so I like The Sims, not normal dollhouses, and most people wouldn't think of it that way (especially the male players of the game,) that's basically what The Sims is, a big dollhouse. And I've been an aficionado of The Sims since it's original release. I purchased the original game back in 2000 just after it came out and have played it off and on now for the past 4 years. At first the premise of a reasonable self sufficient AI drew me in, then it was becoming the master of a particular profession, then I moved through the male specific pastime of discovering and exploiting ways of killing my sims, from swimming pool accidents, to trapping the maid in a room with no doors or food. Then I got into architecture. That's where I've been at for a while now. rosebud (The money cheat code) has lead me down the path of trying to find house layouts that allow the little sims to go about their daily business without their rather idiotic navigation AIs getting them killed (Traffic jams at doors almost never resolve and people will crash in doorways after enough time and eventually starve.) I would spend hours building a house for 8 (I only made minimalistic designs, I wanted to keep cost down if I could.) Then I would fill it up with sims and let them get to their business, and if no one got jammed up in a doorway, hallway, staircase (although there was a nifty bug that could render the stairs a non object), or sidewalk, I would declare it a victory. The best one I came up with was a prision, (Think 8 very small crappy houses stuck together.) I never did buy any of the XPaks though, I just didn't feel like sinking $30 into my doll house. But that's not why I'm writing.

EA Games will release later this year (hopefully) The Sims 2. This version takes advantage of new graphics and better AI (presumably only now available because of memory and processor requirements.) It adds some WAY cool additions like true 3D camera movement, aging (A feature that was sorely missed in the original), hereditary traits, better AI, weather, and a much better sim customization method. Also your sims can get fat, so now your clothes don't make you so... (An interesting feature of the original was that your sims would get fat or skinny based on what they where wearing...) I just want to see what I can do with the customization engine as well as how the hereditary traits work. They say that there are dominant and recessive genes in the game and that each "child" follows in the footsteps of their genetic memory. Babies grow into toddlers, into children, teens, adults and finally into old age and death. I am just giddy over the idea of being able to support multiple generations of victims, uh, I mean, little computer people, (Which is, BTW, a great game for the C64 that is just like the sims on a much smaller scale.)

In any case, I can't wait for it to come out. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. But you can see some of the promo videos on EA's The Sims 2 home page. Check out the videos. Looks absolutely frame-lag-a-licious! But good... I promise. ;)

Look at all the happy flaming people...

Mood: Overjoyed, and apparently sadistic... I need the weekend to hurry up...

Well... Now that I have a few moments where I'm not doing homework, chores, or waiting for a bus... :)

I've been trying to get up to the present in "College Roomies from Hell!!!". It's an awesome comic about three guys who get stuck together in the same dorm room, the three girls who are in the dorm next door, a hooker, a psychotic mother, and an obsessive teenager. It's REALLY funny. And the best thing is: It's published every day! That means that I get all the CRFH every day, not just on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Schewa!!!

As far as school goes, I finally have a chance to sit down and talk about it. First things first: I swear, never, ever again will I take 4 killer classes in the same semester I plan to work 20 hours a week. Because of this idiocy, I now have something on the order of 15 hours of homework that I have to do on sunday every week, plus 4 hours every Monday through Wednsday. The problem is that with 12 hours a day allocated to school and work, 4 hours of homework, and 8 hours of sleep (If I plan to be at all effective at work and school), I now have 24 hours of stuff packed into 24 hours. But wait! There's a problem! I need something like 4 consecutive hours of fun time if I have any intent of not going insane!!! Now, I have all of Friday off, so that helps, but unfortunately, that means by the end of Thursday I have 4 days of insanity built up. And let me tell you, I am a very unstable person. 4 days of my normal insanity is kind of like a month of solitary confinement to the average mortal. This means that by the end of the week, I'm trying to make sunny side up eggs with a sledge hammer. It's not a pretty sight. At this rate I can pretty much assume that I will have pulled all of my hair out by the end of the semester. But the good news is that I'll never have to take this particular set of classes ever again.

However...

From what I can tell, there is no change in the difficaulty of my classes between now and when I graduate. After this semester, I'll have only two GE's left to pad my schedule: Principals of Microeconomics and an upper division philosophy class. That means it's going to be specialty classes from here on out, and I don't see any of those classes getting any easier. *SIGH*

Ah well, I guess I'll figure out something before now and when I graduate. Or I won't and it won't matter because the guys with the white coats will come and take me to a place where they don't care what your educational level and experience are... Hopefully no mortians will be involved, but we'll see...

...yzarc ginog ylwols ma I .dnekeew eht llit yad erom eno ylnO

Mood: Disturbed... Very Disturbed...

AAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!

I havn't had but like 30 minutes to have fun in the past 3 days!!! I'll post again when I get a chance...

I Hate Homework!!!!

Mood: isagoyflielkufgisay7tg!!!!

3 Hours....

What could you do in 3 hours? Well, you could:

• Play Final Fantasy XI
• Write a program to simulate the harmonic motion of springs
• Design and build your own crystal radio
• Play a full game of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, or soccer
• Watch 7 episodes of anime on DVD
• Finish studying for a 3 credit hour class
• Watch 6 episodes of american cartoons, complete with commercials

What did I do with the first three hours of my day? I dropped off my brother at school and drove 11 miles to work.

Seriously! I got up at 6:00 AM, got ready for work and school, left the house at 6:30 AM. Then I dropped off my brother at 7:00 AM, and at 7:30 AM got on the highway. By 8:30 AM I had made it 20 blocks. I finally arrived at work at 9:30 AM, which left me only 2 hours till I had to leave for school! I was horiffic. Normally, when I know I'm going to be in the car for 3 hours, I bring some CDs and other stuff to keep me busy. But it normally takes me between 15 minutes and an hour to get to work. And it only takes an hour on the worst of days... But not today... Nope, no siree... Icy roads = 3 hour drive to work...

Gawd!

But I had a good weekend. Right up until I went to do my homework and it took me a full day... That kind of sucked, but I did get to watch all of Blue Seed. And let me tell you, that show is strange! Not the strangest show I've ever watched, but definately up there... And it had blue sparklies too! The ending only made kind of sence and basically boild down to FUIM. BUt that's neither here nor there... In any case, it was fun to watch.

Geez, I where's a truck stop when you need one... I need to stretch...

Mood: Stiff

Oh and I took this morality test thingy... Check out my Morality! 62% liberal, 38% conservative.

but the test is highly overgeneralizing... For example: One of the questions on the test is "Do you believe abortion is Right/Wrong?" and you can answer along a gradient... Well, after pondering the question for a long time prior to taking the test, I decided that because I am a male and will never be faced with that kind of decision, it's really not fair of me to attempt to qualify right and wrong.

I mean, most people would never think themselves qualified to discuss the ethics of commenting in code and the nature of software development. As such, I don't find myself qualified (For anatomical reasons, not educational, but the point remains the same...) to make ethics judgments about abortion.

Another question asked me about the legalization of Marijuana. The choices where a gradations of yes to no. I answered yes, definitely. But the reason I answered that doesn't come from morality. Drugs are bad. They're an overall drain on society, and serve no value to the community (the way most people use them.) Thus drug usage is wrong... But Marijuana should be legalized. The reason comes from the societal drain that drug law enforcement, and black market peddling brings. With thousands spent on misdemeanors offenses, a drug with similar effects to alcohol, and a VIOLENT black market, there's really no reason to continue to encourage people to deal the stuff in back alleys and lace it with stiffer drugs like cocaine. Legalization means subjugation by the FDA, sin taxes (Taxes on things like gas, beer, and cigarettes), and enough competition by big companies (The organized crime rings... lol...) to drive the back alley peddlers out of business. I'll be it, the companies are just as bad for the number of crimes committed, but they ruin lives with lawyers, not bullets. Some say that's a worse fate than death, but at least you're alive to consider it.

So take what you see with a grain of salt... Not that most things shouldn't, but that's a topic for a different time.

Ah... But who cares about morality when money's involved...

Mood: Still Eh...

2 class sessions down, only 118 left to go.

The first day went smoothly thanks to a little bit of planning. The campus I go to is rather large and it can take me quite a bit of time to move between buildings. So if I'm not careful I can end up with classes that are too far apart from each other and too close to each other time wise that I cannot actually make it to class on time. So I put many hours into making my schedule (in 15 minute chunks... I'm lazy remember?) and try to come up with the optimal schedule. Every semester, however, I seem to end up being forced to take one class where the timing is tight. This time it's my two math classes. The classes are 10 minutes apart, and 2 blocks apart. Worried, I spent all the time necessary to find my classes up front and found them before they where supposed to start. Then I timed how long it took me to get there. When I found out that it only took me 3.5 minutes to make the trip, I finally relaxed and sat down to read "The New Tenchi Muyo" volume 3. Dark Washu is cool... I also got around to drawing again (A pastime I save for boring classes...) and drew a back to school picture of Jim and another unnamed girl (I'll post it soon.) I'll continue trying to draw more than one person in the same scene this semester. Also more interaction between them (This one has the placed disociatively apart.)

At home I played generals and waxed yet another easy AI that had a prebuilt base (I should turn it up, but laying the smackdown is fun!) Didn't even bother to log on to FFXI... I'm never gonna get to lvl 25 if I don't play now will I? But then again the game is loosing it's allure (like galaxies and EQ did). Stupid GADD (Game Attention Deficit Disorder). Oh well...

Well, we'll see how tonight goes.

Mmmmm... Raspberry Blackberry flavored soda water...

Mood: Eh...

In response to imp's post on homosexuality (which is in response to another post somewhere else...)

It is difficult to use genetic diversity in plants as an argument for homosexual intercourse. The plants do not have homosexual intercourse and the farmer's lack of genetic diversity came from heterosexual exchange of genetic material. Homosexuality does not enforce genetic diversity on any level, as it cannot result in a new genetic consequence. Even if by choice, homosexuals must at some time, by some means engage in a crossgender exchange of genetic material in order to provide genetic diversity and strength against the rigors of a natural system. This means that the diversity that is found in homosexuality is a cultural diversity, not a genetic diversity.

However...

Cultural diversity is an important point as well in the process of the "Human Experience". Without said diversity, given social and cultural groups stagnate. The feudal system was only removed because of an injection of external ideas from there cultural viewpoints. As such homosexuality may be nessicary in society to provide progress. How it teaches us, however, may not necessarily be by positive or negative example, but instead by the development of cultural tolerance or acceptance and the path leading to it.

Oh... And BTW...

If "Seems to me that if the only way we were designed to go together was man inside woman, there wouldn't be any need for such sensitive areas in such convenient places." holds true than any argument that is pleasure with no practical ends, such as homosexual sex (which leads to nothing but pleasure, and has no practical ends,) and drug use (the only reason for getting high that I am aware of is personal pleasure,) can all be justified (and for any level of drugs, from marijuana all the way to heroine). However, you're right on the "Just because it leads to child birth it's healthy doesn't fly" point. A lot of things that are natural are wrong and could lead to larger problems (Like overpopulation.)

Lessons Learned

Mood: Ponderous

Well, school starts tomorrow. And you know what? This semester is seriously gonna suck! Mixing Calc III, Diff EQ, Physics II, and Circuits I. All of them are high load classes. Add 4-6 hours of work before classes and 12 hour days, it's just gonna be rough. Well, it's late and I need to get my stuff together, so I'm gonna keep this short and call it a night.

*Shudder*

Mood: Sleepy

Let's consider a thought for a moment. Envision you have a child. This child is about one and a half years old. He Cannot speak to you but is capable of motoring around by themselves. Now, envision that you have a front yard. You like to let your child play in the front yard. But your front yard has no fence, and the neighbors are butt heads and will complain if your child is on their lawn. So you purchase a lightweight tazer (Not a self defense one, think more along the lines of playing with the pizeoelectric sparker on a BBQ lighter, which BTW, hurts a lot, but won't take you to your knees like a combat tazer will.) You mount it to the throat of your child, along with a beeper and a radio receiver, and then place a proximity transmitter loop in the boundary to your lawn. Set it up so that the beeper goes off at say 3 feet and the tazer goes off at 1 foot from the radio loop. You then lead your child around the yard. When your child goes close enough to the loop to cause the device to beep, you pull him back away from the loop. Then once or twice you let him wander close enough to set off the tazer. And rather than let him cry you briskly sweep him away from the loop. Then when you let him out into the yard, you make sure you have this device on your child.

Now, if I saw you do this to your child I'd call social services. I mean, that's cruel and unusual, and there's no way that the poor kid could know why. But this happens every day with only one modification: the one and a half year old is replaced with an equally naive dog. Now, the thought patterns of a dog and a one and a half year old are about on par, so the chances of knowing why this is all happening is poor. I mean, if the dog could be told why you need an invisible fence, you could just tell him that streets are dangerous and the neighbors don't like it being on the lawn. But they can't, so rather than being a good "parent" and not letting our "child" play on the front lawn instead of the back lawn, we've resorted to shock therapy. Now, does this really make sense? I mean come on!

(Bzzztttt!) "Yipe!"

Mood: disgusted

I saw this absolutely AWESOME stick figure guy combat (Almost no blood, yea) animation on another blog. So I have to post you the link. See it now! I also DLed the file, so if the link ever gets broken, I can post that...

Gardening. Well, Kilara has spent the last two days watching the grass grow. Literally. Every moment I've been home Kilara has been logged in and watching her grain and vegitable seeds grow. Sad, I know. But that's because I've been working on another project: The Crystal Cataclysm. It's a Radically streamlined vessel in the shape of a 8 faced crystal (2 tetrahedrons connected on their bases) that is the carrier of a Mega Particle Beam Cannon. Well, that and 7 Rainbow Gatling Lasers for shooting down close range foes, a 3G engine, and a full plane space jump drive. Weighing in at 200 KLbs (or about 100 tons) the Crystal Cataclysm is a $22 Million Ship that can penetrate all but the toughest force screen. With luxorious accomidations for 1 and room for 10 in a pinch, It has all you need for long term space flight. Think of it as a bedroom with a steering wheel. And don't forget Lithos, the self sentient complexity 6 robotic brain of the ship. Capable of being your friend, copilot, navigator or gunner, Lithos is sure to please. 500 mile realspace sensors and consume convienence's best value choice in plane space sensors mean you will never be left in the dark when traveling in the great void.

Not bad huh...

Now I just need to design a character who can afford it... :)

Bang! pow! Shwoosh!

Mood: Awestruck

Been a while since I blogged (Well, for me anyway...) But in any case, Things have been going fair. Kilara broke her favorite taru taru rod and now uses a clothes pole to fish. Unfortunately, I need a small fish rod to catch anything with the sibiki rig I was using before. So I'm just gonna have to go get another taru taru rod so I can do my Fish till dawn maneuver (insect balls are expensive as compared to using the sibiki rig which costs nothing.)

Spoony! and I did manage to defeat a hard AI in C&C Generals yesterday. It was one heck of an achievement all things considered. He played as the GLA Stealth general and I played as the Chinese Infantry general (My Favorite one.) Because of his stealth the AI left him alone, but he kept smacking on me. So I played the role of cannon fodder, holding the AI's attention while Spoony! amassed his invasion force. Then I used my air strike and carpet bombing to down the AI's power (and thus his defensive structures,) and since he had all of his forces trying to run me over, his base was basically unprotected once the power was down. We then struck at his remaining power, then laid to waste the remainder of his base. As an interesting point, he lost more units than I did, an amazing feat considering that he kept fuel air bombing my infantry defenses. Eh, but if you win, who cares?

School starts up pretty quick here, but since there's no classes on Monday, that means I'll have worked 2 weeks and 2 days at full time this month. That means that just the first half of this month should pay off most of the money I took out of my account for school. W007! And since I then work 20 hours a week for the next several months, instead of 16 like last semester, the hope is that I'll actually get back up to my desired amount before the end of the semester, leaving my summer money to the task of buying anime and computer upgrades.

Life on a ship in a bottle.

Mood: Moderate (but feeling a bit ill)

Looking around at different stuff on the how stuff works website and ran across a link to this article: The radioactive boy scout: when a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor. Now I've tried quite hard to link this with it's supossed source on Harper's Magazine and havn't been able to tie it. But that's not why I'm writing.

Over the years I've studied quite a bit of chemistry, atomic theory, etc, and come to know quite a few things. And based on what they talk about in the article, I can't see any reason why the described method wouldn't work. I mean, a radium paint radiation source, acting upon the thorium and uranium targets though a neutron converter would definately create bigger isotopes. And I've known about the radioactive isotopes in smoke detectors for ages now. I mean, how better to build a smoke detector than to use ionizing radiation in conjunction with an electron source. Heck, I've even developed schematics for a geiger counter based on the reverse smoke detector effect (i.e. trapping smoke in a chamber, placing two plates in the chamber, electrifying the plates, and then measuring the current flow through the smoke junction.

What bothers me though, is that the article inadvertantly contains enough technical information to build your own makeshift breeder reactor. I'm lazy, and don't have the attention span required to build a crystal radio, but someone with a bit more motivation could easily use the instructions to build their own reactor. The boy in the article really only needed three things to get started, the radium paint, the thorium from the lantern covers, and the lithium from the batteries. The remaining components are freely availible (Beakers, bunsen burners, aluminum foil) from places like Hobby Lobby and Safeway. All of the other stuff he used where "the things that didn't work." A person who would want to irradiate a place could take the direct route to his final result and bypass all of the steps that he took in the middle and go straight to a breeder reactor. Which is a wonderfull way of killing and maiming hundreds. Just invision making several of these devices (Which at the start are only mildly radioactive), and then placing them about a neighborhood. As the breeder converted more and more of the thorium into U-233, the amount of radiation in the area would grow enourmously.

But heck, am I any better? I provided a link to the directions, and then suggested a way to use it as a weapon of terror... It's actually kind of concerning to even consider the ramifications of this kind of thing.

Oh look Timmy! That thing there glows. Let's take it home with us.

Mood: Happy (Information is cool no matter the ramifications.)

Pots, pots, Linarou has pots. Brass pots, clay pots, all in different shades...

Okay, okay, so she only has 2, and they're both brass... But the point remains the same: My Gardening char now can actually go about the process of gardening. And yesterday I pulled a bunch of Taru Tartu Rice, Blue Peas, and Light crystals from my plants. The first two aren't worth anything... But the Light crystals are worth a fortune. I pulled 10 of them, and if I sell them one at a time, then I can turn the 10 of them into about 3K. Awesome.

On the personal level, I figure I might be able to get my cash flow back to stabilized this semester. My reserves have been slowly draining since last semester, and now I think that my total cash flow should have a positive value. Always a good thing.

Nothing like stealth... Nothing.

Mood: Happy

Did some system administration on Motoko. More tightening down on the security. And I sent an e-mail to all the guys about their e-mail accounts. Apparently, some of them had tried to give people their email address with the wrong capitolization. On a unix server you can't do that, you must get the right caps. Well, for the username at least, but the point remains the same. Also locked down FTP better so that nobody can escape their home directories unless I let them. And I won't. MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Uh, *cough*, ya...

Anyway, the hope is that as time passes my user base will grow, or at least all of my users will take an active part in the process that is the web server. Mostly, what I want from them is to make sure that they keep active in our little community. Now most of them do by means of the friday night gathering. But people like Kayman and NightDrako sometime just can't. So the hope is that they'll make good use of the e-mail, forum, and web page services and stay active. However, some people fail to so. Omega Bum has been absentee now for some time on fridays and the forums. Now I know he got his name for just those reasons, but it worries me when we don't hear from him for long periods.

With FFXI out, many of us do communicate (via the NQIG link shell,) and a lot of that just doesn't show up in a permanent record anywhere. So I guess that that really counts as well, but still. Many of us can't be on at the same time (Again, like Omega Bum and myself) so things like e-mail and the like really help bridge the differences in schedules.

Ah, who knows... Anyway, one of these days I'm so gonna get a T1, some coustemers and a T1 router with a set of channel modems so I can run an ISP and give low cost access to my friends. I tried to do that before with our second telephone line and my DSL for one guy, but the ol' man said no. Oh well.

CHEDDER IS BETTER!!!!!

Mood: Self Satisfied

This was a little something I came up with a while back about what happens when feminisim goes too far. Unfortunately, there aren't many men out there who could fit this role, as the amount of gender bias, although way down from previous years, is still unbelievably high. But there are an increasing number of women who fit the bill, and it's a point which conserns me.

The Truth About Equal Rights

Cast:

Man - Woman's husband and equal opportunist
Woman - Man's wife and extremist feminist

Man: Could you help me by mopping the floors? I'll begin dusting the furniture.
Woman: Help you mop the floors?! Why should I mop the floors? Is it because I'm a woman? Am I expected because of gender alone to enjoy cleaning?
Man: (Dusting) No, I just want...
Woman: I don't care what you want! I have wants and needs too! I have rights!
Man: Well, so do I but I have to...
Woman: Sure, you have the right to watch football and go out drinking with your buddies while I'm stuck at home mopping because I'm a woman.
Man: Actually I don't drink, we both agreed to that.
Woman: It's irrelevant. You always demand that I do the cooking and cleaning. Well, men don't deserve the treatment that you get from us women.
Man: I agree with the "deserve the treatment" but not the way you ment it when you said it.
Woman: What? You think you deserve more?
Man: Yes and no.
Woman: Well, what more do you want? We cook for you and clean for you and do your clothes for you. What? Want us to put your slippers on for you?
Man: (stops dusting and folds arms) If that where the case, then we wouldn't be having this argument.
Woman: What?! If I put your slippers?
Man: No if you cleaned. Now could you please get the mop?
Woman: I've never seen such insensitivity
Man: yah, ya, men are evil.
Woman: Men deserve the rights of pig dogs.
Man: And women deserve the same rights as men?
Woman: Yes!
Man: (Begins dusting again) Then let us all be pig dogs together and get the house cleaned up. Then it will be clean for your ladies club meeting. Which I might remind you, caused my civil libraties lobby meeting to be canceled and relocated.
Woman: Ugh! (Storms out for a mop)

Nothing like a mop to bring out the best in someone.

Mood: Neutral

W007!!!!!

Man visits Mars by proxy once more!

Despite the failure of the Beagle 2 probe, the American made probe Spirit has landed and is transmitting pictures of the martian landscape. Schwea!

As for Kilara and Linarau, Linarau is having trouble coming up with money for pots, and Kilara has taken up fishing. So now I garden and fish, both for cash. The hope is that I'll find some good fishing in town, and be able to fish without endangering my beautiful plants. Ok, so they're really not all that beautiful, but you get the idea.

And as trivial as it may seem, it feels kind of weird being mentioned in the paragraph immediately following a discussion of a man's first guy-guy kiss. It doesn't actually mean anything obviously, as the writing was in a log about someone's week, and he came to my house the day after new years, so it makes logical sense from a chronological sequencing point of view But it's something new and different. But then again, even being mentioned by someone else in a place other than my own site or on the forums is new too. Typically, (by design I might add,) I try and keep to myself. Years of issues in school taught me the value of anonmitity as a form of defense for my absolutely atrotious social skills. Eh, so things are.

But then again, maybe it's all a matter of peers. Most of my lot, as adept as they are with computers, tends to be lazy as all hell. And just don't seem to like doing anything that involves effort, like maintaining a web site, or keeping a blog. And it's not like they don't know how. 70% of them know HTML, 30% know UNIX management, and the rest know who to ask. But right now the only people who I've spent any time with that have a staning web site (that is actually maintained on an interval more frequent than once a month) are Icy and OniAkki. One or two more actually have some kind blog as their only presence on the web, and I was able to coax Spoony, Hobbit, and Cyan into making a website. But most of those go unaffected for months at a time. *Sigh* But I guess that's the way things go when a sloth would call your friends lazy.

I think that's enough rantage for one day, so

See Ya!

Mood: Happy, Confused, and Disappointed...

And now, back to our normal schedule of basic rants and daily updates!

For those of you who don't know me, I'm an obsessive freak. Now as an interesting point, I obsess a lot, but about a lot of different things. And it changes, frequently. For example, there was the CDRR (Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers) period, then Love Hina, and that evolved into my obsession with Nadesico. All of my obsessions are never forgotten, they just become less important with me. As such, I will finish my CDRR story... It's just taking me a while to work out how to end the story... :)

However, my personal life has continued unabated down my path to ultimate happiness, I have a new video game. :) Command and Conquer: Generals with the Zero-Hour expansion. It is a bad A** game! Like all the other C&C's but with schewa grapics and the coolest group ever, the GLA. In games where all you wannt to do is be really annoying and make your friend paraniod, there's no one like the GLA to keep your opponent on his toes. I'll be it, this is because they are the Global Liberation Army, a group of terrorists... But fun is fun no matter what the name they apply to the sprites. :)

Oh, and now I have 6 books of manga that I'm going to have to get to when school starts back up. Thinking of which, they should be sending me a bill pretty quick for the classes I signed up for. Another $2000 of perfectly good upgrades and DVD thrown down the black hole of education. Ah, but the hope stands that I'll make enough after school to pay it all off. Not that I'm going to school for the money mind you... I picked my major purely out of interest in the subject; the fact that it may lead to employment and better saleries later is purely coincedental. I just wanted to be able to do circuit design without melting twenty-five bucks worth of components because I have no idea what I am doing. :)

To the bank Alfred, and step on it!

Mood: Eh, so so with a little bit of happy.

To start with I read this great quote,

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever - Anonymous

And I got to thinking about that. You know, normally quotes are tidbits of wisdom congealed into a couple of words. But something struck me; did this bit of wisdom help the author? I mean look at it! A quote about quotes making your name live forever, written by an anonymous author! Either someone tampered with the quote, invalidating it anyway, or they didn't believe in their own quote or want their name to live forever. Not exactly the best source of advice I can think of. :)

But besides that, Life has been good. Kilara now is level 24 and has blizzard (Yea!), and I've started another character named Linarau (Pronounced Lee-na-reow, with a bit of a purr in the last syllable) for the purposes of gardening. She's short some pots (Ok, she doesn't have any pots at all yet, But it's taken me this long just to get the 10 Kilara has.) But she has progressed nicely as a monk. The reason I'm doing this is so that I can get her to a point where I can kill Walking Sapling after Walking Sapling and get seeds and crystals readily for her. But she may continue leveling afterwards, just as something else to do. :)

Oh, and I was looking at purchasing a new Motherboard, CPU, and RAM for MuggleEater. The P4 HT (Hyperthreading) processors have really come down in price, and the jump to dual channel 333 or 400 MHz RAM would really up my speed. Owch!!! $500... I don't have that kind of cash... Well, at the moment anyway...

*Sigh*

Mood: Disappointed

2003, A Year in Review.

Everyone is doing a year end review of current events, so I figured I would do one too.

But I thought, "Hey, they're all talking about Bush's lies and the war with Iraq, the Governator winning the gubernatorial race in California, the space shuttle disintegrating in the upper atmosphere, the absolute flattening of Iran by a massive earthquake, etc. I should cover good things about the past year!"

So here's the list.

• Final Fantasy XI was released in the United States, to wonderful sucess.
• I discovered the joys of web comics.
• Galaxies was released.
• LotR: The Return of the King was released
• Harry Potter book 5 was released (And what a fiasco THAT was... Plus the book was only mediocre.)
• Adult Swim began airing Family Guy.
• All 14 of the Love Hina Mangas where released.
• Shonen Jump began it's run.
• The NQIG forums came into existance (and blew away all our previous bandwidth consumption by an order of magnitude.)
• My DVD collection almost quadrupled
• I was accepted to, and finished with good grades, my first semester of university.
• Vice City was released for PC
• The Matrix movies (#2 anf #3) where released

Oh, and for my new years resolution: "Continue as is and if the situation changes, adapt to continue playing video games, working, and going to school."

Happy New Years!

Mood: Sadistic (Ya, I know it doesn't show in my post... But it's there...)

People of the world of Sylph rejoyce!
Ding dong the trees are dead, the trees are dead, the trees are dead.

Ok, so maybe it's a little bit overdone, seeing as I havn't even bothered to talk with the teleport NPCs to see how the heck they work, but it's a step in the right direction. If you aren't aware, FFXI has an event running where a bunch of very nasty trees have spawned, and if all of the trees are killed, you'll get a teleportation service of some sort. Yesterday, our server whacked off the rest of the trees, and according to a friend, the teleport NPCs showed up. Now, I was living in the Palborough Mines all of yesterday, so I have no idea where these people are, or how to use them. Guess I'll have to do that later.

This afternoon is going to be seriously messed up, as we have my grandpa's birthday tonight. But we'll see what happens.

Cheese Ball!

Mood: Contented

Took me 2 hours, but I did it; I made my own comment program. I really didn't feel comfortable using someone else's comment system, so I spent some time with PHP and created my own solid program. Well, it's pretty solid anyway. :p You can't enter any HTML into it (not because I couldn't let you, it's that I don't want you too.) So now you don't have to worry about your comments disappearing (and as it turned out, the only comment lost was my own, go fig.) And I can make it availible to other people who like it if they E-Mail me.

Oh! And we killed the sparkling tree thingy in South Gustaberg. It was really cool. Rumor has it though that if our server wipes out all the trees by the end of the christmas event, we'll get a teleport service between all the outposts on our server. It would be WAY cool. So we'll see.

\/\/007!!!!!

Mood: Giddy

Well, I took the advice of Imp on the Social Stigma forums, and added a comment tool. I'm not sure if it works (I'll be commenting on this post when I finish,) but if it does, you should be able to make direct responses to my blog. I'm using BlogSpeak to provide this service, but I don't think I'll keep it there forever (At which time all comments will be lost X-|,) because I don't want to be a drain on their servers. But that means I'd have to write my own PHP app and keep the DB on my server, but it's not really beyond my skill to do. We'll see...

Christmas had an interesting twist. By trading and exchanging the different gift cards I got with my parents and my bro, and actually got what I wanted on my Christmas list. When all of the smoke cleared, I got #3 of the Chobits DVD's, books 6,7, and 8 of the Chobits mangas, the Bruce Almighty DVD (A great movie I might add, two thumbs up!), Call of Duty, Neverwinter Nights Gold edition (I have NWN original, but it's the ORIGINAL, the installer is actually broken and crashes on every XP system I've tried it on), a 256 Meg USB Flash drive, a weight set (Yes, a fat lazy bum like me presses weights), some CDRs, new headphones, and $50 to the college book store. A pretty good haul.

As for the rest of my life, I've had trouble substantiating the pattern for gardening in FFXI. My last test crop, a 5 plant test, driven with grain seeds and earth crystals (Always examined at the same time, feed the crystals at the same time, harvested at the same time) yielded TaruTaru Rice and Lightning crystals. I think I need to reexamine my patterns. Also, I think I might take Spoony's advice and play in the Freetrader campaign with a multimillionaire char who owns his own freighter, or maybe a criminal with a stolen ship, or an entrepreneur with a business loan. We'll see.

And that's how the cookie crumbles.

Mood: Excited

Well, It's Christmas, that wonderful time of year when enough wrapping paper and unwanted presents are thrown away to fill several landfill. And what is my atheist butt thinking about? Why Christmas, and Jesus of Nazareth's birth have to be completely unrelated.
It actually draws from a simple, yet obvious point: Why would the Romans, a practical people, collect taxes in the middle of winter? It may seem like a dumb point, but supposedly (Here's the Bible sourced info), Jesus was born during the time of tax collection, which was the whole reason that Mary was in Bethlehem in the first place. Now, based on doctrine, the holiday of Christmas falls on an absolutely dreary day in late December. Italy this time of year, and Rome more specifically, has an average high of 57.0F and a low of 41.2F. This doesn't sound like much, but when you don't have central heating, and cars with heaters, being out in that kind of weather is unpleasant. Also, December is one of the wettest months in the Roman year. Now, the tax collectors have to come to Rome from all over to deliver the tax money. Why would a practical people like the Romans have them do this in a time when it will be cold and wet for the next few months? Why not collect in early spring for distribution in the mid summer?
That is why I feel it is HIGHLY unlikely that Jesus was born on what we call Christmas Day. (Oh, and all of this is unrelated to my atheism... That stems from a concept called Instantaneous Consciousness that I'll discuss at length somewhere, sometime...)

Merry Christmas!

Mood: Sleepy

Well, as promised, I tried sushi yesterday. Decided after about .1 seconds of deliberation, that I still very much detest the flavor of fish. Oh well...

I compared my signiture on the Social Stigma forums with that of everyone else, and it seemed a bit overdone... So, I changed mine to a simple, text only sig. Looks Nice too...

Oh, on the gardening front, I've substantiated that there is at least SOME relationship that drives what you get from your plants. I planted 4 plants with the same seed at as close to the same time as possible, and checked them at the same times, and fed them the same crystals, and, although I got different amounts, I got all the same item (tarutaru rice in this example). So, I will be keeping a database of all the times I plant and all possible info, in hopes of determining the secret of the corn... Metaphorically speaking of course.

W007! Who 'da man? Ya I be 'da man!!!

I got A's on all of my classes except for my physics lab, where I got a B (I completely missed a prelab and a postlab...) That means that I did OK on that final (Or the teacher really didn't care what we scored, he just wrote A for everyone who had majority attendance. Doesn't matter to me :)

As for the Table(13) var, I now know that it is related to water quality capture volume (Think parking lot with a pond connected to it...) And my boss is having me completely rework how it is used in the new software.

In FFXI I leveled twice in one day ("*gasp*, he still levels?", ya, it amazed me too...) And I am basically broke from purchasing the really cool spell Regen.

Today is my first day off, and christmas is on the way (WOO!!!) Dispite my distain for fish, I've vowed to try some Sushi today. The reason I would do something that seems so obviously like a bad idea is that I decided "I don't like fish" some 10 years ago, and have actually managed to not eat ANY fish since then. Well I vowed to never eat supreme pizza ever again too, and when I tried some a while back, it was actually really yummy, so I figure it would be stupid to keep myself from a delacasy (or so everyone says) just because I didn't have a taste for fish a decade ago. So we'll see what happens (And I have a backup plan too, so I still get to eat if this goes foul... :)

Well, I'm off to play some FF till Vap gets up.

Have Fun!

お早う!

So continues my adventures in gardening. So far I have no evidence that there is any relationship at all between what you start with and what you end with. However, some basic differences between the different types of plants are clearly visible. Grain seeds tend to yield simple stuff like crystals and food, whereas vegitable plant, although they take longer to grow, tend to yield more valueable items. If anyone knows where (besides auction) I can find other kinds of seeds (What drop them, etc) I'd appriciate their help.

As for work... I have this one variable in the code that I'm translating that is called table(13) (Don't ask, bad coding practice is not the topic of discussion, well, not directly any way) and I'm trying to figure out what it is. Of all the elements in the table array (Which is part of a simulation and is comprized of several different variables squished into an array) 13 is the only one I can't figure out so I can make a named variable for it... Annoying...

Well.. I've finally begun playing in OniAkki's GURPS campaign. It's actually really fun. I've always had to play DM, so I've never really gotten an oppertunity to participate as a player. I should do this more often.

I've also come to love my phone's mobile AIM. My phone's AIM client sucks as compared to others, but it's still a great way to kill time. And I've figured out how to extend the battery life while using it, so I'm really happy about that (Seems the backlight costs a HUGE amount of power.)

Christmas is coming up (Along with a 9 day vacation starting friday night and running till sunday next week) and I think, for the first time ever, I may actually manage to get to stay home and enjoy my christmas vacation, rather than dealing with all the stupid inter family activities that normally are mandated by the "jolly" season.

My grades will be availible on the 22nd and I'm dying to find out how I did. I'm certain that I aced 4 of the 6 classes I took, and of the remaining two I have a good bet I have an A and a B, but I want to know for sure.

Till next time!

WOHOO!!!

I've figured out what it was that I hated about all of the Jim drawing besides the Grr_Baby drawing (Which I see as the master image of Jim that all images of Jim strive to attain.) His hair and his torso. Look at the original image. You'll notice that he has a triangle shaped torso and square legs. In all the versions of his body I don't like, he has a double cone shape (With the point about at the belt.) Jim is fit and trim, so he needs to be kinda squareish, thus why he looks funny. And in the lazy Jim drawing, his hair sweeps in. This is what made him look funny. If next time I draw Jim I put a little bit of extra work into him an make his hair and body just right, I think I can make a Jim I can be proud of...

Click to listen

I've been watching a bunch of audio prints while I'm at work (When you can't figure a routine out, the hypnotic pattern produced by my audioprint AVS plugin can clear your mind easily) and ran across this one when playing Clubbed to Death. You can litterally see the harmonic tones shifting. Schwea!

More lovely CSS...

I've patched the CSS so it's more standards complient, and even added a seperate sheet for printing my site (If you have a good browser, the right one will be automatically selected.) However, this means that there's a good chance that the pages look terrible! If the CSS isn't accounted for, the output will have a LARGE number of anomolies... But hey, such is progress. IE4 and Netscape 4 should be able to handle my CSS just fine. IE 3 won't load my background image, but who has IE 3? If you do and you're reading this, it's time to upgrade. Lynx does well with the site too. I was impressed.

Oh! And the change caused the stupid bug in IE to go away!!! Now ehrn you refresh the main textbox doesn't slide into the navibar... W007!

Well, I've come to a startling realization: Almost all the comics/anime I really like have kitty people in them. Ok, for those that know me that's not startling... Ok so it should have been obvious... But it was startling to me. From the list of things I watch/like, here's the ones with kitty people: RPGWorld, Tsunami Channel, El Goonish Shive, Pilot Canidate, Nadesico (The Ruri scene), Totally Spies (Wild Style episode), and Samuri Jack. Disturbing...

And I've changed job classes in FFXI, I was RDM/WHM now I'm GDR/RDM/WHM... After reching my goal of attaining level 20, I had nothing better I could think of to do, so I decided to take up gardening... So now I log on for 5 minutes twice a day to harvest my plants. I've grown a healthy list of cool stuff too. Light crystals, gyshal greens, etc. I've been thinking about trying to repeat some things by keeping really good track of lunar cycles and day of the week, but I havn't started that yet. If I do, I'll make sure to post my findings on my web site.

Took apart my old cell phone hoping to salvage it's old LCD... But sadly It was not to be. The LCD was connected to the cellphone's main board by means of a multi layer cable, but it was soldered to the board. I'm no good at unsoldering, so even though I succeded at not destroying the Electro Luminecent backlight, I still messed up the LCD. It was really cool though, the controller was literally molded into the cable. And I did manage to get the EL working (At significant personal risk mind you. Kids, don't play with the power direct from the outlets without professional training.) It glowed a pretty green/blue.

And I've resolved that I WILL make an LCD driver for my paralell port one day. Probably based on the Hitachi HD44780 controller just because it's really easy to work with.

Went to that art test yesterday... Uh... Ya... Bombed it. Got all but one thing on the slides though *gasp*. The hope is that my 80 on my first test and the 100 on my paper will make up for the 75% that I estimate I will score on this test. Stupid modernisim... Oh well.

Found out something with Mario Party 5: The goofy games are almost entirely based on button mashing. I wore out my index finger (and whole right arm for that matter) pushing the A button an estimated 2000 times during a 20 turn party mode game... Whew...

Got around to reading the comments on Hobbits new drawings (Finally got around to scanning them, the bum... :) In any case the comments are short, but the drawings are great. I dream of that kind of aptitude... Oh well.

Been meaning to draw a comic using Jim, but I don't have any ideas... The few things that I think are funny are a bit too esoteric for a widely viewed web comic (Or heck, even to be viewed by my own group...) so I think it may take some time for me to get started.



FFXI? What is the FFXI you speak of?

Well, I was rummaging around, looking for interesting information, and ran across a rant written by Cortney Love about the RIAA and piracy. Really interesting. She brings up some interesting points. I've also learned (from my favorite, non comic website: How Stuff Works that, as I suspected, the performing artists are not due any royalties from traditional distribution methods (CD, TV, Radio). And as a brief filler, here's all the players in getting a song out:

• Songwriter
• Publisher
• Recording Artist
• Record Company

Of those, in the typical arrangement, the Songwriter (Who does own the rights to a piece of music and the lyrics) sells the copyright to the publisher, who aggrees to split the royalties 50/50. The publisher promotes the song and issues licenses to a Record Company, who then hires a recording artist, who, helps them produce a recording (as a work for hire). The record company now owns the copyright to the recording, which they then use to manufacture CDs and issue to stations for performance, etc... Now notice, the artist (the person we most associate with the song) was used as work for hire. This means that they have no right on any level to any royalties. Most artists are promised a fraction of sales, but the record company steals this money back by means of Recouperation. They charge the artist for actually printing the CDs, packaging them, promoting them, etc... So effectively the artist (who isn't required to be paid) is being charged to earn the record company money... Serious BS.

Not that I have any talent mind you, but if I where an artist, I would use the same rule I use as a contract programmer: The record company pays me a flat fee for my labor. Basically, I will sell you my time for $500,000 to record 15 songs, which you will then make $11 million on. No recouperation, no nothing, just state and fedral taxes for self employment. My employer doesn't charge me for staples and envelopes to send out copies of my work with their name on it, neither should the record company.

But like I said, I don't have any talent... So really I guess that's more advice for up and coming artists.

As for my life, more Mario Party 5, and the Art test that I havn't studied for. If I'm lucky, they'll ask be about a bunch of art terms that come from latin. I did the C final, peice of cake... El Gooney Shive is still cool, creapy, and pleasently strange while Megatokyo is confusing me. Fred, if you read this (never, ever, ever do I expect that...) hurry up and finish this camera sequence so we can figure out what the heck's going on!!! And what's up with Ping?! Why sad? Anc What is this malfunction?! PLEASE finish your plots so I can follow along... Oh, and keep up the good work. ;)

Finals Week: Short classes in a glass.

I love finals. I can finish them in half the time alotted (except for math ones, which take me the whole time plus a bit), so I get to leave early. Yesterday I could leave so early that I actually had to get a ride home unless I wanted to wait for 2 and a half hours for my carpool. Today I finished my 10 minute final in my "Intro to Electrical Engineering" class. Later I have a final in C. I suspect it will be just like all the other tests we've had in that class so far. But what that means is that I'm running on my own schedule tonight! Woo... I'm worried about my art final because it's based entirely on a book which I havn't read (and, although I've tried, I can't bring myself to read it either.) So I'll be BSing my way through that one. Good news is that it's multiple choice. BUt the first part of teh test I've ot big problems upcoming. It's a slide matching segment and I just don't know most of them. Unlike the first test, he hasn't run the slides every day for the last 7 weeks, so I don't have most of them memorized. *Sigh* so we'll see.

I've also found a new comic (Yea!) that I like called "El Goonish Shive", but I can't decide if it's shonen, shojo, or hentai. There is action, romance, and gratuitious use of a transformation ray. It's wierd enough that just calling it hentai probably works best., but only because of it's preversion of the character's form. Interestingly, this comic has the most solid plot of all of my faves, Megatokyo wanders like a 2 year old's attention, Nekobox gave up on a continuing storyline months ago, Help Desk loves plot holes, 8-Bit Theater is okay, but seems to ebb and flow about the topic, and RPGWorld and Adventurers will give you schizophrenia from all the multiple topic jump arounds (RPGWorld has no less than 4 standing parties). Although it sometimes jumps around, El Goonish Shive has been progressing nicely along on the plot, leaving no tiny point forgotten.

It rocks.

On the FFXI front, not much is happening. Why? Well, some of the games I've been waiting to be availible for rent from Blockbuster finally have been in. In the last 3 days I've done nothing but play on my Game Cube. I beat Tony Hawk's Underground in 2 days on Normal mode (There's 4 modes, really easy, easy, normal, and hard.) Considering how much I actually suck at one player games, that's impressive. And yesterday I played Mario Party 5 with Cyan and Vap for most of the evening. So Kilara has been level 20 now for almost a week. And isn't at all close to level 21. Oh well. At least I've been checking on my plants. :)

Well, that's about it. See ya in my next post.

Ohh... Glad my parents didn't know about this when I did the experiment...

A while back I was doing a demonstration on electrolisys for a friend. With the intent of turning water into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. But that particular night I decided to improve the current flow by adding some simple table salt. Knowing a bit about chemistry, when the thing started emitting a visible vapor, I shut down the experiment and immediately disposed of my experiment. Good thing I did! I was doing some research on the manufacture of bleach and discovered something: I was in the process of manufacturing not 1, not 2, but 3 very hazardous chemicals (2 of which I know how to handle.) Apparently, salt water, when exposed to a significant electric current, produces three chemicals: NaOH^-, H₂, and Cl₂. For those of you who don't know what those are, I'll explain them to you. NaOH^- is Sodium Hydroxide, which has the common name of Lye. This is a VERY strong base and direct skin contact (with some water) can cause severe chemical burns. Nasty stuff (but a very useful base in diluted solution). H₂ is Hydrogen Gas. This was an intended result of my experiment. Hydrogen gas is highly flammable and will explode if mixed with Oxygen gas (O₂) and given a spark. (The best explosions come form an environment with a 2:1 Hydrogen:Oxygen ratio.) The final result Cl₂ is Chlorine gas. This gas is highly toxic and will kill you in any reasonable concentration. Interestingly, it is found at swimming pools that use Chlorine bleach (a special compound made by mixing a NaOH^- solution with chlorine gas, manufactured by companies like Clorox,) as their disinfectant. Chlorine gas give swimming pools their distinctive "pool" smell.

There's only one thing I couldn't figure out: the vapor I was getting was orange/red not green like Chlorine gas. I have two theories about this. The first one comes from the electrodes that I used to energize the water. I was using alligator clips, so there was a chance that one of the products could have reacted with the clips (made of either aluminum, steel, or zinc, I can't remember) and caused the altered result. The second was the fact that it was iodized salt. This means that the salt contained trace quantities of iodine. This could have reacted (probably with the Hydrogen or the Sodium Hydroxide) and caused the additional colored byproduct.

In any of the above cases, I won't be doing that exact experiment again for a while (Unless I have an on the spot need for Sodium Hydroxide solution, and can do the process outside where the amount of Chlorine gas released is trivial).

Well, I was reading a rant written by Dom (From Megatokyo), and he started talking about a person running for a government position in California who wants to pass a law that places violent video games with sexual content for the purpose of sale (i.e. illegal to sell to minors.) Now how stupid is that?! ESRB has a volentary rating system that has been in effect for some time now that tells parents what kind of video game their kids are playing. The parents have a responsibility to protect their children's minds from damaging topics. If kids who arn't supposed to be playing violent video games are, it's the parent's fault for shirking on their responsibility. Not the retailer who sold it to them, or the game manufacturer. Adding a law does nothing more than encourage parents to not pay attention. And the kids will get their games anyway, either by playing it at a friends house or coercing their college age cousin to buy it for them. I mean geez...

Well... Today I decided to dealve deep into the palborough mines. And I got really far. I could easily take on two of the quadevs there at once without breaking a sweat. So deeper and deeper I went. Till eventually I came to the threashold of a large room. IN this room there where 2 or so quadevs, but no biggy really... But then something unexpected happened... About 7 of the buggers showed up. I did my best but died in about 30 seconds... You can see my pain in this picture:

Right about this time, someone else decided to show up. Aparently thinking they wouldn't aggro on him he pushed right by. This also had an unexpected, and rather unpleasent side effect...

Next time I'll have to go there with Tander so I can wipe them all out at once.

Well... I took Emode's little IQ test thingy...

Let's be honsest with ourselves... The IQ isn't a measure of intellegence. The IQ measures the ability to recognize patterns and retain information. For those who don't know, the IQ score (Which is constantly being adjusted...) is calibrated such that 100 is the mean and every 15 points in either direction marks a standard deviation boundry. So people between 85-115 are within 1 standard deviation from the mean. 68% of all people fall in this zone. People with IQ's between 70-85 and 115-130 are in the second standard deviation and 27% of all people fall in this zone, etc. Because of this relationship, the fact that most people have an IQ between 70 and 130 isn't suprising, because 80-120 includes 95% of the people. This means that in the US, people with IQs > 130 or < 70 is only about 14 million people. That's roughly the same number of people who suffer from chronic bronchitis in the US.

Oh, and if you absolutely must know the result of the test... I pulled a 138... You'd think I'd be extra happy about this, but as it turns out, I'm one of the dumber people in the group I hang out with :p. Most of the people I group with seem to score in the 140-160 range, It's kinda sad really... But then again, when one of the people you hung out with scored a 1600 on the SAT and a 35 on the ACT (and was LIVID that he couldn't get that 36,) it's kind of hard to compete... (and I though my 31 was awesome... I wanted a 25 so I could get into a good college...)

Hurray Hurrah! The new site format is up.

Oh, little word of warning. If you have any bookmarks to the old .html files, you really should update those. Everything ends in .php now. If you used a directory link, like http://www.nqig.net/jtc, then your link will still work.

And if anyone notices a broken link or malfunctioning section, please e-mail me.

Ok...
Now, normally I don't like to hit on topics for my blog that are actually important to the flow of the universe, but this one struck me as needing to be posed.

AIDS

AIDS has grown to epidemic levels in Africa. But not just in the places where people live in mud huts and raise cows for a living, but in places like South Africa, where the quality of life matches us here in the United States, where people have cars and computers and televisions.

This is where I have problems. In the US, aids is an issue, with 890,000 (about 0.6%) adults afflicted in 2001. In that same year, South Africa had 4,700,000 (about 20.1%) adults with HIV/AIDS (Data from http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/). Now, this is in a country that has all the amenities that the US does, so all the sources of information are present, but they have 33 times more people per capita that are infected. How? Why?

I have no idea. I think that it's truely scary that a country that has information everywhere is capable of such a high contamination rate. Now I know that here in the US we're all germophobes, so we tend to obsess, but this disease is transmitted by only one of 2 ways: Sexual Contact and Blood-Blood contact. The flu here spreads like wildfire, but that spreads aierally, you can be infected by just being in a place where an infected person has been. But with AIDS, it is perfectly safe to be roommates with the person. Now that's not wholly true, because their weakened immune system can allow their body to be used as a breeding farm for some diseases that are usually squashed by normal immune systems and thus are only availible in small amounts, but in large quantities can overwealm a healthy immune system. But AIDS itself is REALLY hard to spread. Sleeping around and sharing needles are basically the only ways to spread the disease to more than one person (Your spouse is at EXTREAM risk, and a woman with AIDS has a 50% chance of infecting her newborn child...) And technically, people who sleep around using a condom with an antimicrobial reduce their chances of infection by 99% or so (Don't quote me on that).

So, why is it that South Africa is so messed up? The people there have access to what I do information wise...

It's disturbing really.

Oh... And I have an appointment to see my advisor so I can get registered... Yea!

Back to work... :(
It was a good vacation, so I'm not really all that unhappy. But less time at work is always better for my psychy. However, that's not my real issue. The big issues is: I havn't registered yet 8-0! I got my invitation to register on Nov 20 and it's now Dec 1... I can't even register if I wanted too because I havn't talked with my advisor. I don't even have an advisor appointment... So I'll be rushing to get one setup and get registered ASAP...

Ya, I'm a very bad person. I have absolutely no drive to accomplish anything. Even my FFXI character suffers because of my poor drive. It's like all I want to do is nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that's why I'm going to school. Because some day I'll make enough money to retire, and with that money I will stay at home and do nothing. Once every couple of months I might wash dishes and clean the appartment, but otherwise it will be TV and video games for me. The only thing I might do is eat.

Thinking of which, eating and using the restroom are really the only drives I have at all. Everything else is just something to do because I'm bored. I play games because I'm bored. I work because I play games. I go to school so I can work. I want to do nothing because I go to school and work. Simple as that. So it's all a nasty cycle so that I can stay at home and do nothing because that all I really want to do. I don't want to help humanity, I don't want to better myself as a person. alls I want to do is stay at home and be a consumer whore.

And when I succeed, It will be a very good, do nothing life. Omega Bum's life would be dos primo! Sans some of his less desireable hobbies, I would dream of living his life. Do simple work, earn trivial income. Have all my base needs provided for. It would be awesome. But since I have no parents willing to let me do that, I'm going to school to get a degree in a job that I'm good at, so I can earn a lot of money over 10 years, retire, and do seasonal work around christmas to give myself a system upgrade every year. The problem? I need about $30,000 a year for basic survival. Which means that I would have to have 2.1 million dollars, invested in accounts that have an actual yield (accounting for inflation) of 0%. That's some tough accounting to earn 2.1 Million over 10 years... So what I need is more planning... A scheme that is full proof to keep my in the black for 70 years to come. And the secret? I think the way I'll make this work is through investment. Saving a million over 10 years as an electrical engineer is difficault, but not impossible. If I can yield $100,000 a year (unlikely, but possible) then I can make a million in only 15 years. Not the 10 year goal, but close... Then by using inventment techniques that have a greater than 0% yield, I can grow my million and drain it simultaneously. For example. If I find an account with a 3% REAL yield (roughly 6% if you have 3% inflation). I can get my 30,000 a year that I need to survive by skimming the interest off the top of the account. Higer yields = higer yearly income. The only secret would be that first million. And if I supplement my accounts with a consulting business, I could actually grow my money.

Big plans for the whole objective of accomplishing nothing. But these plans will lead me there in approximately 17 years (including remaining school) and with proper investment, could be accomplished sooner...

Evil shal rule... MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Today I feel pretty good. And my temp is only 100.1F. Tells you where it's been for the last 3 days, doesn't it? :)
I've been running a temp between 101F and 102.7F for the last couple of days, and considering my baseline is 97.4F, you can get a feel for how bad that is... Twice I had to log off of FFXI because I was TOO SICK TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES! If I hadn't seen it once (and ONLY once) before, I wouldn't have believed it to be possible. I mean, what does it take to play video games? I even use a controller instead of the mouse/keyboard to play FFXI, just because it takes less effort. But I just couldn't push myself to play anymore. It was kinda scary.

Also I found out that a person of my dainty mass of 134 KG, can take up to 5363 mg of ibprofin a day without ODing. Or so says my mom the nurse. It turns out that my fever wasn't being controlled because I was taking 200mg every 4 hours, (The minimum and recommended OTC dose,) when a person of my size should be taking 400mg and another 200mg if symptoms don't respond. Go figure.

*NOTE: This is not formal medical advice!!! DO NOT take more than the recommended dosage unless instructed to by your doctor. The recommended dosages are fine tuned to work without harming you. Follow the directions on the container.

There, I said it. Now none of you losers can blame me for waxing yourself with Advil or Motrin.

Anyway, I've got my sub class (Yea!) and hope to level my white mage class to 10 as soon as possible. Currently I'm a RDM 18.2 / WHM 7.8. Having a sub class is cool. I can cast poisona (My favorite white mage spell), and it buffed my mana from 116 to 140. That's a whole extra Cure II. 66 HP for some lucky sob. :)

Well, I'm going back to FFXI (Now that I can remain conscious for the duration.) Have Fun!

Well, I'm sick... It sucks.
But in good news, I've got tommorow, Thursday, and Friday off. Always cool.
Finals are coming up, so I've trying to be prepared for that one, (My art class is going to seriously mess me up unless I can get more practice with the slides. Oh well.

OMFG... LOL...
I know this is my third post today, but, LOL...
You have to read this post.
I mean, he summarizes the total truth of the extended family. And with thanksgiving coming up, I can SOO sympathize with this guy. Our family does the same thing (sans the 40 people), and you can see it.

LOL...

I got the pagination on my gallery working with teh Help of OniAkki! Yea... And I got a copy of my AP transcripts, so I would assume that the school has gotten them as well.. That means that I can setup an appointment with my counsler to get my schedule approved. Woo!

Jim is pissing me off though, mostly because I can't seem to get anything even remotely consistant regarding his face, and the last one I even had a reference drawing... I think that the only way he'll become more consistant is if I actually parameterize his face (Generate ratios for eye distance, noze size, forehead dimensions, etc.) Either that or I've hit the defining boundry of my artistic talent (Which really wouldn't suprize me considering that only a year ago I though that my artistic talent wasn't adaquate for rendering stick figures.)

I like Poodle Hat.

And Hobbit: YOU FORGOT TO SCAN YOUR STUFF AGAIN!!!

Anyways, I turned in my art paper last Thursday, and I'm worried that the teacher might notice that I wrote about 3 full double spaced pages of garbage related to a conspiracy theory that probably doesn't matter to anyone be me. "The flag was chosen to join the nation after the 9/11 incident because Bush wanted to make some good war, but no one would let him if they wouldn't take it as an attack against America," Total gibberish I came up with because I was thinking about it at the time. Although it's not really gibberish, I mean I really do wonder, but not enough to make a 3 page paper about it.

Mood: Sleepy

LAN parties are fun, but I always stay up too late. We played FFXI from 1:00 PM to 1:00 AM (Which is way too short). But anyways when you have to get up at 6:00 AM, you find that life doesn't necessarily work quite right. Luckily, I have most of this week off, (Thank you thanksgiving,) but I have to goto my aunt's place for thanksgiving itself, so part of what would be a perfect vacation is messed up, but that's the way life goes.

And I screwed up and forgot Jim's Glasses, maybe I'll remember them today and draw jim again. And I forgot to do my C homework, so I have to do that first... :)

I'm thinking I may abandon the Front Page themes thing I'm using and go back to doing it the old fashioned way... With pure PHP... MUHAHAHAHA... Anyway, what that will let me do is emulate the behaviour I got with themes, without having to figure out how to make it cooperate with my gallery applications and my blog (Which, as you can tell, doesn't work with themes either.) So I think I'll use a universal PHP template to generate my page and navigation structures. Plus it will let me bring back the really cool formatting that my old site had. I really liked that format...

OW!!!

I woke up this morning with my back hurting, and it still hurts. I think one of the muscles on th middle left side of my back is cramped... Bummer...

Anywho... I got some more colorized drawings up in my gallery. And I've decided that Jim should have glasses (Like the ones I used in my self drawing) as Hobbit suggested. So from now on he'll have big spiral glasses. I'm not exactly sure how they're going to stay on his face, seeing as his ears are above his eyes, instead of along side them, but I'll work something out (This problem has already presented itself in the headphones question...)

I've also worked out a complete SQL query statement for selecting the images in my gallery:

SELECT url, thumburl, comment FROM jtc_gallery WHERE gallery = '$gallery' ORDER BY DESC createddate, createdtime LIMIT $start, 11;

I'll then check the result set and see if there are 11 or less images in it. I'll display only the first 10, and if an 11th result exists, I'll display the Next button. This way I'm not going to cache the whole table in memory just to decide if there are more records. $gallery is a string reference to the name of the gallery, and $start should be a number that marks the first desired record. Both will be derived from the $_GET structure.

Well, I've come up with the world's most un-user friendly PHP application ever for running a gallery, but it does actually work. So now the question, how the heck do I integrate it with my site?! I use front page themes for everything (Server side) and really would like to keep it that way, but the problem is that I have no idea how to force front page to parse a file not made in Front Page, let alone actually have it post process a PHP file... If anyone has any idea how to do this, send me an email and help me out.

Oh, and in further news, I tried out that blue line thing I wanted to do and it works... Yea!

Well, I was looking at my galleries last night, and it is becoming quite clear that they are getting seriously out of control. The size of the pages is starting to push a quarter of a meg, which on dialup connections is horrific. So I need to chop them up a bit. The current method was a chop of an older method with everything on one page. What I really want to do is develop some method for dynamically building the gallery pages from a database. That way adding images is really easy. Otherwise I would have to redo ALL of the pages every time I add a drawing, or add new drawing to the end. But I would really like to have my new work at the beginning so that people who are regulars can quickly check the new stuff and move on. The problem with all of this is that I don't know much at all about using PHP to communicate with a MySQL database. Ok, so I only know how to make it say my name, but the point remains the same, I'm going to have to do some serious studying if I want to get it to work. I think what I'm going to do is install the Windows version of Apache on my laptop and PHP on my laptop and work on it during my C class rather than sleeping or drawing kitty people. :)

I called the people at AP and had them rush send my physics I transcripts, so I should be able to register for classes in 2 weeks or so.

Yea!

Had an old friend send me an e-mail (through good ol' Spoony) and am I estatic to hear from him (When you only have like seven friends in high school, three visit your house every friday, two live lives that are flat out incompatible with yours, one who has moved on and followed a different path, and one you know you'd like to hear from) and the one you haven't talked with send you an e-mail, you rejoyce in it.

[plug type="shameless"]
Don't forget to visit his web site http://www.socialstigma.net.
[/plug]

Mood: Giddy like a school girl

Well, I did a gallery publish and a basic website update. It's not much, but it's something. :)

In other new, I got my Megatokyo poster back up in my room (It tore of fthe wall, I was pissed.) And I got pictures of the lunar eclipse that happened last sunday.

Mostly eclipsed...	Still mostly eclipsed...	Eclipsed (cool huh?)

It's all about the link shells... I like link shells, it's like guild chat. It keeps us NQIGers together nicely.

But for more important matters, registration for classes has started for me at school and I can't register for any of the ones I want ('cept for Calculus III). Why? Because I am a lazy slob and havn't gotten around to transfering an AP Physics I class I took back in high school. But, since I'm in an engineering field, physics is basically the foundation of everything, and as a resault, is a prerequsite to everything. The circuits I class I want corequisites physics II which prerequsites physics I and calc II. Lucky for me I already transfered all my calc credits so that's fine, but since I want my schedule to be Circuits I, physics II, and Calc III, not having the physics I class basically kills the whole thing Not that the schedule that I built is actually a good one, mind you. It has me in school from 10:00 AM till 6:30 PM on mondays and wednsdays and going to school after work on tuesdays and thursdays till 6:45 PM, which sucks, but would let me work 20 hours a week, thus letting me earn enough money to not have to worry about affording the DSL for the server, the IPs for the server, my cell phone, my FFXI account, school, computer upgrade, etc.

Well, I finally understand why a lot of the people in the anime sound the same, it turns out that the same person who does Naru in Love Hina and Kaoru in Rurouni Kenshin (Dorothy Melendrez) does the voices for 2 more of my favorites (Meryl in Trigun and 003 in Cyborg 009) as well as a whole plethera of other things. She even did Kiyone for the Tenchi movies! I was a bit amazed when I found out all the different things she'd worked on.

Oh, BTW, I found where to buy world passes (about 1200 gil) in the port area of Bastok. It's up high in one of the little shacks, not in the buildings, which is where I had been looking for them and thus why I couldn't find them.

Well, FFXI is out, so my Galaxies account has bit the dust. On the 27th of this month, my galaxies account goes off. But I think it's worth it.

Kilara, my 10th level Mithran Red Mage has been ridding the land of Vana'Diel of foul beasts. All those evil sone eaters, vultures, and quadavs have a new fear... Ok, so maybe not, I'm not even good enough to get my chocobo license yet, but I have slain a very large number of them... :)

Turns out the game has all of the components of SWG except for dabbling. In FFXI you can dabble in the crafts, but dabbling in combat skills/jobs is much more difficault since your skills in them don't stack. Much like Everquest, you gain levels, and get better items, and, *GASP*, buy things from NPC vendors. However, playing on the same server as a friend is quite a bit harder. You have to buy a "World Pass" in game which gives you a 10 digit code that you enter to play on the same server. I have yet to find one, so I'm kind of disheartened...

Anyway, FFXI has proven to be a wonderful game, and looks to hold my attention for a good month or 3. We'll see. ;)