100 WPM

Ipad Impressions

2010-01-27T21:21:57Z

First impressions of the ipad on NYT.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad-first-impressions/

Ok, so this was a long post about my ideas of where the iPad could go. but LJ ate it. It makes me sad. So here it is, or at least some of it, for the second time.

What could be done with the iPad? What do I think will be able to be done?

I predict many medical apps. My doctor already carries a laptop wherever she goes in the office (of course I wouldn't have a primary physician who wasn't net-savvy!), I expect the iPad to replace it. Obviously Steve had dreams of making the tablets doctors used in STtNG into reality, here it is.
games games games! Obviously more real estate will enable bigger, more complicated games, and I'm longing to play Eve Online on my future iPad. BUT, what about playing chess with 2 people at lunch? Or another game, whatever. The iPad is big enough to actually play boardgames with multiple people in small areas. OMG, I'd love to play Arkham Horror on an iPad just 30-45 minutes at a time, start a game on Monday, finish the game on Friday.
Interactive TV (inspired by the MLB description). Ok, we've been wanting this forever, but how do you navigate a video stream in real time? Hard to do by mouse/remote control, but touch? I'm imagining watching a sports game where I can click on the players to bring up relevant wiki-like pages for them, or the coaches, or the soft drink on the field. ;) "Click here if you'd like to know more" Ah, Starship Troopers
DND combat tracker. I'd like to sync an app for tracking monsters in D&D with a virtual keyboard (maybe ala Surface) for people to manage their figures on. Touchscreen, the light weight, and the long battery life make this perfect for tracking initiative/monsters on.
Webcam chat. Ok, I know the iPad doesn't have a camera facing the holder of the screen. I think thats sad. :( But, a bluetootch attachment could possibly be added, clipped onto the top? I think it'd be awesome to videochat through a iPad.

What else could be done on it?

hosting game notes on Obsidian Portal

2010-01-23T03:00:18Z

I've been using Obsidian Portal to track campaign notes for my Saturday 4e game, its going pretty well, though its hard to stay on top of it and keep it updated.

Update - Success

2010-01-19T15:29:00Z

Well kind of success, they sent me a coupon for buy 1 get 1 for 3.99 Anna and I enjoyed dinner there last night for a pretty decent price. :)

Open Letter to Chevy's Fresh Mexican Grill

2010-01-13T22:09:52Z

I sent this letter to Chevys. I got one coupon email too many trying to get me to buy something I flat out don't want, when they have something I specifically do want.

I just wanted to comment on your coupons. Most of the time your coupons are absolutely useless to me. I want to explain something. I, and many other people, don't like chunks of onions. We just don't, I don't like peppers either, but thats a different situation. So I go to a mexican restaurant, and I want good fresh refried pinto beans thats just beans with maybe some bacon cooked in it, and fajitas, just steak. But at any other mexican restaurant the tortillas are premade not fresh, and they tell me they can't give me just steak, its all mixed together.

So I go to chevys and the steak or pork in the fajitas is delicious, incredibly delicious. And I ask for it just steak, and they say everything is fresh here, so no problem. I can't get the beans, because there are small diced onions in it, so I just get steak and tortillas, though last time I got some fried yucca and it was yum!

The chips are fresh, strangely, I like your salsa, but just the juice, not the onions. I'm weird ok? But I'm not alone, plenty of people don't like that weird texture of the onions.

You send coupons, and do you send 2 for 1 fajitas? No. Do you send Special 2 dollars off lunch portion fajitas? No. You send specials for these combos you keep making more of on your menu. And you know what? I'd love some tacos served in your fresh tortillas. Just diced steak or the pork, cheese, and fresh tortilla, awesome. My gf would probably get it with lettuce and diced tomato too, she isn't as much of a purist as me. But your combos are all crazy, tons of ingredients, I can't just ask for meat and cheese, because they all have peppers or onions with the meat premarinated.

I grew up in New Mexico, when I would go to my gf's house, her mom would put all the ingredients out for the entire family and we'd go through and fill up our tortillas with whatever we wanted, it wasn't all mixed together. It was the most delicious mexican food I've ever eaten, so I don't want to hear any "this is authentic", maybe it is, but there are many "authentic" food styles.

You used to have many chevys in Las Vegas, now you just have one. And where do all my friends want to go when we want mexican? Macayos. Macayos!!! Do you know how bland they are? And no, I can't get fajitas there, they premix it all. Or they want Michoacan, which is pretty good, and they make fresh tortillas, but the chips are hard like a rock. I want chevys, but it seems like you're going further away from what makes you great.

I'd love to go to Chevys for lunch, I spend about 9 dollars a meal for lunch, but the fajitas are too expensive to go to every week and your combos, are, like I said, crazy. o_O

Thanks for hearing this rant.

Compromise is not the answer to all problems

2009-10-28T17:02:30Z

Science is not a democracy. Science doesn't have compromise. You make the best decisions with the facts that are available. Period.

Thanks

Socialism vs Capitalism an Email Exchange

2009-07-21T17:11:27Z

This was a little email exchange I thought I'd share, with my coworker who always is arguing his extreme fiscal conservative capitalist agenda.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:56 AM
To: Richard Mathis
Subject: Econ wisdom

I imagine this story is a hoax, but the moral is accurate. Made me think of Anna and the other professors you talked about. - JWM

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before,

but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

This reply is to the email down below

My Response
There should be another story where the econ professor gives a limited number of grades of each type (As,Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs) and doing certain activities can allow a student to rack up more than 1 A on an exam.

Then watch how certain students will get multiple As “just in case”, preventing some other students from ever getting a single A, requiring them to work ever harder to get multiple Bs to equal a single A, which makes it even harder for the next set of students to even get a single B by getting multiple Cs, let alone working hard enough to get the equivalent of an A. Which leaves half the class unable to get anything more than a high D or even an F.

Which would illustrate that a system based on competition without adequate safeguards will always result in a system where certain members of society will always get far more than what they need and keep it for no other reason than to have it, resulting in other members of society working harder for less and less.

The point of all of which would hopefully tell the readers of the two stories that only some form of moderation between the two is a viable means of creating a productive society that benefits the majority if not all of its members.

Richard M Mathis

Application Development Lead

7/17/09 crazy coworker

2009-07-17T22:32:47Z

Nick's diagram showing how cats are like cars

My problem with Shadowrun

2009-06-29T14:16:13Z

I know a lot of people who have liked the concept of Shadowrun since 2nd or 3rd generation (I'm one of them, I still have my 2e book). The setting is awesome, and while I think people who take their "real world characters" and toss themselves into a D&D world to try and emulate the idea of us dealing with a fantasy world is LAME (Gah I hate when I hear someone is going to run this cool idea blah blah, sorry, it might be superawesome if you like that kind of thing, to me, its lame, dead in the 80s, let the cartoon go ;)), I think the idea of "our" entire world being meshed with magic in some sort of post Mayan apocolypse to be very intriguing, especially with 4th edition where they've caught the technology up with our own and stepped it up a bit.

But why aren't more of us playing it then? I'm running a game over on the forums of dndorks.com (http://forums.dndorks.com/forums/thread/810092.aspx) and one of the principal issues I'm having is the lack of GM support. A lot of sections vaguely tell you how to handle a particular type of conflict, but the core book doesn't do a very good job of explaining what are ideal difficulty levels, especially for a group of new players.

The next problem I have is related to the first, which is that there isn't an easy way to determine what is an appropriate challenge for characters with 0 karma, 30 karma, 60 karma, 100 karma, etc. I'm sure if you've played a group through 50 points of karma, you probably know what they can handle, but honestly I feel like there should be better difficulty tiers. I noticed the adventures often have whats called a Threat Level, some sort of system to describe who can handle what or how to modify the adventure appropriately.

But honestly, for someone like myself, creating a run by myself as a new GM to Shadowrun, I feel like I should be given a better idea of how to plan the run, what kinds of IC to use, what kinds of spiders, etc etc.

I feel like part of the reason is that Shadowrun leans much further towards "realism" in its rules, meaning that the system describes the rules as it is, rather than as some sort of gameboard for the players to play on. So if you know the typical stats for a large important matrix with its IC and so on, then thats what it is, even if it'll instantly kill your 0karma players... and thats fine, I suppose, it'd be lame if it was just as challenging to hack Ares at the start as it is 10 adventures later.

BUT shouldn't there be a way for me to know at what point can the group handle a run against Ares? Other than going over their large and complex charactersheets looking for every possible combination?

Message to Social conservatives

2009-06-25T13:55:06Z

So at this point, with another social conservative in the news for an extramarital affair, you, if you're a social conserative, must be wondering how this happened? How is it that these individuals of such high moral standing find themselves in affairs?

I have the answer for you, after this, no more wondering.

The liberals have infiltrated all the social conservative groups. Your churches, your political parties, they've snuck in, intentionally acted like good social conservatives for decades, talked about how important morals were, then completely tossed the morals out the window and had a very public outrageous scandal, just to mess with your minds.

Surely this is the only way that those of high moral restrictions, which you're a minority in this country btw, could have so many successive scandals? Hopefully this helps you sleep better at night, knowing that the moral quality of your most vocal leaders hasn't crumbled, it was never there in the first place, at least not for the super secret liberal spies.

Who will be next? Who knows, all of them? Wouldn't that be ironic, though it'd make me feel better personally. Hopefully these very smart intelligent individuals will retain their offices, I've always liked Ensign, but personally, I hope if they stay in office that they start worrying about say... running the government, you know managing the economy, international relations, defense, and not worry anymore about social issues like who is marrying who, who is sleeping with who, what divine entity someone pays homage to, or other crap that has nothing to do with what is actually important to government.

After all, it'll be hard to say with a straight face how important christian values are when they've been publicly outed for their own particular preference of sin.

Research Papers are totally worth it!

2009-06-15T21:26:04Z

2004 Fed study entitled,“Are Home Prices the Next Bubble?”

Starts here

“Home prices have been rising strongly since the mid-1990s, prompting concerns that a bubble exists in this asset class and that home prices are vulnerable to a collapse that could harm the US economy.”

Woot, crisis will be averted, the smart people have things in hand.

Ends here

“A close analysis of the U.S. housing market in recent years, however, finds little basis for such concerns. The marked upturn in home prices is largely attributable to strong market fundamentals: Home prices have essentially moved in line with increases in family income and declines in nominal mortgage interest rates.”

What happened?

Thank goodness for these expensive research papers, if not for them,my 401k might have something like a -6% rate of return!!. >_>

Seriously though, I despise the academic world's emphasis on publishing research papers, since so many of them seem to be worthless, often used by people seeking to justify some often bad direction in politics.

How I color a dndorks.com comic

2009-06-10T16:04:12Z

New Dndorks comic today! http://dndorks.com/comics/6_10_2009.aspx
Arthur Saves the Day Part 2.

And I thought I'd write down my coloring process, in case its useful to someone.

The instructions assume a competency with photoshop, I'd be happy to explain any particular feature though.

First, in a panel comic like dndorks, I select a marquee around each frame, which is each on its own layer, and click the mask button. This makes it so I don't need to worry about coloring inside the lines of the square since I can only color inside the masked area.

Then I create a layer below the background layer and I fill that in with whatever the base color is going to be, blue for outside, gray for dungeons, whatever.

Above the backbround art layer but below the character art layer, I create a layer for the character color, a layer for character shading, and a layer for character highlighting.
The order is important, the Character color layer needs to be below the character shading layer, which should probably be beneath the charcter highlighting area.
I set the shading layer as Darker Color and opacity 30%, then I set the highlighting layer as Lighter Color and opacity 30%. Feel free to play with the % whether you want more extreme shading or highlighting.

Then I simply color on the character color layer. The easiest thing to do for anything with solid lines is using the pencil tool to paint around the ouside of an object then use the paintbucket to fill it. This way, the paintbucket fills it perfectly. If there aren't lines, like I'm coloring my own patterns, I use the brush tool because it allows smooth curves and such, but then when you fill it will create an antialiased line most likely, which you'll need to color over. You shouldn't need to worry about being perfect because the lineart should be above safe and sound and your layer might look messy but the lines should cover it.

Once the color layer is done, now everything else is extra. Change to solid black, click on the Character shading layer, and start adding shading with the brush tool. Because the layer is set to Darker Color and 30%, it will automatically shade to just a darker color than what you're coloring over, it won't be black (well unless black is the darker color).

Likewise, you can highlight by using 100% white on the Lighter Color layer, and once again, it won't actually be white, it'll be 30% lighter than the color on the character color layer.

I'm honestly not that good at choosing "where" to shade or highlight, but essentially you try and think in your head where the light would be coming from and then shade on the opposite side of the light source. You have to think of things that are 2D as 3D so even if some things are towards the light source, due to how the curve works, they may actually be shaded to represent that its curved away from the light source.

Anyways, I find my method to be very efficient and easy, so I thought I'd share.

6/9/09 my gf the doll serial murderer

2009-06-09T23:51:50Z

This is the kind of stuff I find randomly strewn around my apartment

Drama Rant

2009-06-08T17:10:24Z

Occasionally I need to rant so I can stop thinking about stuff, so feel free to ignore the following rant.

I hate drama. Drama isn't something that ever just happens, its created by humans, and its generally a complicated situation mostly involving worthless human ego, because someone's feelings are hurt. Its not valuable, isn't usually sensible, it crap. We often call drama situations "High School" or other dismissive names, because it used to be something you mostly had to deal with in high school, but as the whiny "touchy feely" types started saying we should express our feelings when something makes us feel bad, now we have to deal with this crap as adults too.

I kinda blame Star Trek TNG. Anyone tried to watch it now decades later? I loved it as a kid, I get bored or irritated if I try to watch it now, I keep wanting to yell at Picard "Don't put your ship in danger, they're hostile, attack back or leave!" But whatever.

So a while back, I had a party, and 3 friends I wanted there.

One of the friends was in the middle of a divorce with one of the people and had just broken up with the other. That friend never shows up if I invite them, even after saying they would, but always wants me to come visit them.
The friend who was getting a divorce always came.
The last friend rarely comes, but is friends with my gf and hangs out with her.

So in this scenario, if I want as many of my friends to come to my party, but no drama. The answer seemed pretty easy, if I invite all of them, even the friend who "never" comes but yet still wants me to come to his things might come, just to hang out with who he is divorcing, might fight with the person who he broke up with, and if neither of those two were there, might not show up at all since he normally doesn't show up anyways.

The friend who always comes to my invites might not show up if she thought her ex was showing up, since she didn't want drama.

The friend who rarely shows up, and was invited but didn't show up, might have shown up and gotten into an argument if the 1st person was invited.

So I didn't invite the "friend" who never showed up at my things, and invited the other two. The party was drama free. Of course for some reason the friend who wasn't invited was told about it.

Now honestly, if I talk to that friend 2-3 times a year, have few mutual friends, live 45 minutes apart, don't work together, what is the chance that he would find out about it? In fact, why would I even think about it, I don't need to avoid the issue or "hide" the party, because hes someone I rarely see, ignores my invites 95% of the time, in fact really doesn't act like my friend at all. Probably because I decided to only go to someone else's invites as often as they go to mine, if they're not willing to drive 45 minutes why would I be??? But yet that person was told, by both of his exes? Why would they go out of their way to tell him, especially when they said they don't want drama? I have no clue, and its a bit frustrating, because I still hear about it, 2 months later.

Now the reality is that me and the one person "aren't" friends, we're acquaintances, and distant acquaintances at that, we've hung out a few times, gamed together a bit, but almost exclusively at his house 45 minutes from mine. "My" friends are the people who come to my game nights fairly regularly, or who randomly want to meet up for dinner, or show some interest in my projects without me talking about them. People as interested in what I'm doing as I am in what they're doing. I hoped that maybe I'd become friends with him one day, because he seems cool, but he made it abundantly clear how much he wanted to move away from Vegas, and if we can't be friends when we're 45 minutes apart, at least not without "me" being the one who constantly visited "him", I don't see how we'd ever be friends when he lives in another city.

And now we may never be friends, because he wants to be upset that after ignoring my invites forever I finally stopped inviting him? Meh, whatever.

Rant done.

WWJD - where christianity and christ part ways?

2009-05-29T22:47:20Z

So I'm sure many Christians that are involved in the Prop8 nonsense in California are feeling very happy for themselves. They might feel they've done something great to save the morals of the community or something.

But I wonder if they've thought about the couples that were planning on a valentine's day wedding or something in their favorite locale, and now have had their hopes dashed.

I wonder if, while they were so busy rallying support for the government to lock their morality into law, if they wondered what Jesus would do in the same scenario. if Jesus were alive today, would he be "happy" about a bunch of people who supposedly follow his teachings pushing their personal beliefs onto others?

I don't think he would. Looking through the new testament, everything that describes the way the man acted, talked, did, makes it seem like he had a lot of caring for everyone, regardless if they worshipped god or not. Lets suppose that lesbians/gays were going to hell. Would Jesus hate them? No, I don't think so, he might smile sadly and give some piece of advice, but I could even imagine him being willing to be the one to marry them, giving some bit of advice at the end "that they might one day find god and accept him into their hearts" or what not at the end.

In the end, those who are most happy might want to look inside themselves and wonder if they're doing, saying, voting, the way that Jesus would, or whether they are following the teachings of some pastor, preachor, or internal black emotion within their hearts.

Personally I don't really care, I'm not Christian, I'm not progay, and I don't support their cause. I don't believe in supporting every willy nilly cause, even if its a good idea or a bad one. I do support religion staying the heck out of government, and personally I believe that the government shouldn't recognize "any" form of marriage for "anyone". Let marriage be something between a couple and its church, and stop using marriage as a tool by the politicians to manipulate their constituents.

Anyone who gets married and files to the government, participates in something that has different results if you check "married" or not, don't you feel slimy inside a bit, like some politicians just influenced you a bit more using something that should be innocent and pure, but was turned into a tool to alter behavior on a mass scale? disgusting. <shudder> There shouldn't be a tax incentive to get married, or a health insurance one, military benefits, etc if you're married, because it encourages lots of people to get married for the wrong reasons, which ultimately is bad for society.

Thank you for the free tax money, but ok, lets get sensible now.

2009-05-27T14:32:52Z

So normally when something is unfair for people somewhere else, but good for me personally, I just count my blessings.

But when it comes to prostitution, though the legal existance of it here in Nevada and not elsewhere means that Nevada might get extra tax money from it that we wouldn't get if it was legal everywhere, I'm willing to give up that advantage. Really now, who would drive to the middle of nowhere if they could go to their local red light district for a safe, legal experience?

but ok, seriously now. The flood of articles about the whole craigs list is making it pretty ridiculous: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/05/no-erotic-services-no-problem-for-prostitutes-on-craigslist.ars

If you're a prude, or highly religious, or whatever, try and put all that aside for a moment and turn legalized prostitution into a pro and con list.

Pros

standard required medical testing reduces stds
brothels and such allow women to avoid hiring pimps and bodyguards.
tax money can pay for more society services or reduce taxes.
Less money spent on law enforcement.
Less money spent on lawyers to fight law enforcement

Cons

More people are probably willing to hire prostitues if its legal.

thats it? is there more? The requirement for something to be a con is that it has to be a negative that isn't already happening without legalized prostittion.

Women are doing it everywhere anyways, go pick up a local magazine, look at the ads. Its there. Look online at any classifieds site, they're there. Look around your city, see all the massage parlors? Chances are, most of them there are prostitutes. But these women aren't protected by the law, don't pay taxes into the system, can spread disease because they aren't being tested regularly. They're at risk from predators, and can't ask for help for fear of being persecuted.

Instead of paying all kinds of money to feel good inside morally, lets tax these people, and maybe we can have more money spent on education which in the long run might "reduce" this population.

It makes sense, and its ok, Nevada will do ok, the free tax money based on your (and Las Vegas since its illegal here too) morality isn't necessary, really.

Wow, GOP continues to implode

2009-05-19T15:45:36Z

I'm kinda shocked, the economy is staggering, we have some of the best new changes in government within my lifetime, and the GOP is squabbling and continues to implode.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/19/steele-threatens-quit-rnc-undermines-funding-authority/

Buncha spoiled kids. This is the perfect time for a different political party to replace the republican party. Who could it be?

The GOP consistently disappoints me

2009-05-12T21:28:00Z

So I don't know why, I still like to think one day I'll want to be a republican again, but I think this entire generation is done for me.

I was reading about Schock and I was thinking "huh, maybe we need young members of the GOP to freshen up the party", and I like his focus, cutting taxes: good, Slashing the deficit: good, credit card reform: good. Not that those goals are special, probably any politician will say those things are good. And then the article I was reading adds "oh and hes traditionall conservative on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage".

:(

Why is it the party thats about small government is all about small government and less regulation and interference in people's lives "EXCEPT" when its about telling your neighbor how to live their lives?

Its not the GOP's fault, its the members fault, I know that, but it just makes me sad how hypocritical they are. Its fine to have any kind of social values, condemn your sinful going to hell neighbor, but if you say you want small government, want small government, have the guts to stand up and say "I believe A, B, and C that people are doing is wrong, but I believe its up to the local community and not the government to decide those issues", otherwise how are we supposed to believe the crap coming out of your mouths when you're condemning the "socialist wackos" for trying to have government play babysitter for its constituents.

Nice Summary of Online Play tools at dndorks.com

2009-05-07T15:04:02Z

I posted a nice big summary of all of the online playing tools over at http://dndorks.com/ It explains the different tools I've added recently, a bit on their current state of functionality, as well as some info on how people can help post bugs and such.

I also created a new area of the forum so that people who have some spare time and want to play online. Have Dice Need Game

Not everyone understands what the point of online play by post play, and quite a few people come into the game looking for a direct correlation with tabletop roleplaying. These people are often disappointed and if they don't stick around long enough to see what a pbp game "is", they might never see the pros and cons of such a gamestyle.

Pros of PBP roleplaying

Opportunity for extensive roleplaying. Posts can be long and as descriptive as you want.
Time to think. Everyone can, if they choose, spend a good amount of time coming up with exactly the right dialogue tat fits "your" character. No need to feel rushed when you can spend minutes or hours thinking of your responses.
Recorded play. In most cases pbp games are up virtually forever online, and with archive.org, they're pretty much permanently there. You can explore your old games as much as you want, relive the memories of your character.

Cons of PBP roleplaying

Slow. PBP games tend to be slow, you post, the GM might post 12 hours later, a combat round can take 1 or 2 days or even a week.
Anonymous internet means players drop out frequently. You're waiting for the cleric to heal you, but he never does. The guy never comes online...ever again. Why? I don't know, it just happens.

I have some solutions if you're running a game and want to keep your game moving.

If a user takes a long time to reply, and you have another 2-5 players waiting, post the next obvious action for that user. Maybe that user lost internet access for a month or had an emergency, you'll lose the rest of your players while you wait for that user, which means when the user shows back up your game will be dead. So give your other players respect by keeping the game moving.

If a user vanishes without a word for a week, have that character conveniently leave for a while (with the option to come back) then a week later post that you're looking for a player to replace that user. This way your group is constantly full and you also get new blood into the game. With the history of the thread new users can often catch up right away.

Some GMs don't like the idea of posting for their player, but honestly, at tabletop if someone has to leave for a few hours, we don't cancel the game for the afternoon, we just play for that player. Its the same thing here.

4/25/09

2009-05-02T21:45:06Z

not sure why phone randomly posted this pic to my LJ, its one of my family members from decades ago that I took in my grandfather's house.

What "is" their job anyway?

2009-05-01T00:25:56Z

I think about politics alot. I also think about "meta" politics alot. Tonight, on the way home from work, I started thinking about who we vote for, why we vote for them, and whether we are voting for people for the wrong reasons.

When we vote for someone, we're hiring that person, as a community. We're saying we have a job that we as a society have decided is worth our tax money, and we'd like to find someone to fill that job and we're willing to pay that person to do that job.

I think thats something a lot of us forget, that politicians aren't our bosses, they don't tell us what to do, at least not in the way that your boss at work might do. A politician can't tell anyone of us what to do. Imagine that the president comes over and asks you to type up a memo for him. You don't have to do it, you might if you feel like it, and a lot of people might feel pressured, but you don't have to. On the other hand, if enough of "us" say that we want the president to write memos , DING, he has to write memos or quit his job. So thats the working relationship we have with the president.

But anyway, I think in many ways politicians work their campaigns like popularity contests, and likewise, many many voters get pulled into this idea of trying to figure out who is the most popular. And in some ways, its possible the most popular person might be the best person, maybe thats "why" hes the most popular, but in many cases, maybe hes not.

Different people have different ideas on how much the government is supposed to be involved in fixing our problems. But really thats irrelevent to this discussion, because I'm not trying to say the government should or shouldn't meddle, what I'm contemplating is how often we hire people without even thinking what their job is really supposed to be.

If you're worried about your local conditions, I'm talking about the streets around you, the businesses that open in your neighborhood, the laws that determine what you can or cannot do in your local town, the street signs, lights, and how people can drive in your block, I hope you're directing your attention to your assembly representative. Do you know your state assembly representatives and state senators? Their job is to represent you and your area. They're supposed to make certain your area is the best possible living area for "you" and your neighbors.

People focus on their senators and state representatives, but really, what they do takes so long to affect your lives, that they're the wrong people to have try and fix a lot of problems.

And the president? Whew! He's supposed to be worried about the overview of the country and how we deal with other countries, how many decisions does he make that affect my day to day life? Very few, other than some sort of metaview, maybe something I buy on a regular basis costs a bit more or costs a bit less. "Maybe" my city doesn't get nuked by a dirty bomb due to his directives to homeland security, but that sort of remote possibility is so ethereal that I don't really care, I'm much more concerned with whether the city allows too many restaurants to open in one area causing all of them to struggle to survive (and thus maybe I'll lose a favorite restaurant), or if too many streets switch to 35mph when the majority of streets here are 45.

We hire a lot of the national politicians to handle things that affect the large scheme of things, but each of us only represents 1/370,000,000 of all of the people in this country. Thats 2.7E-9 Thats how much we should each be important to someone at the National level. Now change that to your governor? In my state I am 3.3e-7 of the population, much better! and how about in my district? Maybe .00001 The numbers are simple, the lower we direct our complaints to, the more important we are to that person, and the more likely we are to be heard.

Old people seem to understand this much better, they write letters to every politician that represents them and a few who don't! But the press wants us to focus on the national stuff because its easier for them, and of course large nonprofit organizations are trying to do stuff that affects the nation so they want to get us focused on their agendas.

But honestly most of the stuff that affects "me", and what really affects "you", even if you do get riled up over whatever new nationwide cause of the week, is that street sign, road construction, or whatever they're doing on the corner.

New Dndorks comic - Dndorks Interviews Felicia Day, Part 2

2009-04-27T14:49:32Z

New dndorks comic up: http://dndorks.com/comics/4_27_2009.aspx
Part 2 of 3 of the dndorks interviews Felicia Day storyline. The other two guys of the comic become infatuated with Felicia. Part 3 will tie it all together. :)

On a side note, I'm totally making an insane Arthur into a user pic. :)

New Dndorks comic - Dndorks Interviews Felicia Day, Part 1

2009-04-17T16:35:38Z

New Dndorks comic up! http://dndorks.com/comics/4_17_2009.aspx

I was inspired to write a comic about felicia day after I saw on twitter that she plays 4e D&D, she was actually starting her D&D game the same time my game was starting, which was pretty cool. Anyways, today's comic is 1 of 3 with Felicia Day, who knows, maybe she'll see it sometime and give Dndorks a real interview regarding her D&D playing, for now this'll have to suffice.

Starting New 4e PBF

2009-04-16T05:08:37Z

My first game is still going strong, and I'm enjoying it so much and got so many requests, I decided to start a 2nd 4e play by post/forum game.

Its going to be set in Eberron, it should be very cool, and I recommend reading it if nothing else. If you'd like to play 4e, but don't have time for another game, or don't have people you know, this might just be for you, as it only needs a sentence or two once a day to play, and on your schedule.
Read the current game here to see if its your style: http://forums.dndorks.com/forums/1/808261/ShowThread.aspx#808261

If so, sign up for the game here: http://forums.dndorks.com/forums/808672/ShowThread.aspx#808672

My View on the issue of the week: tea parties

2009-04-15T21:18:00Z

So I've put a lot of thought into the tea party thing, and while I liked the video they put out on Youtube, I don't really agree with a lot of the stuff people are talking about, nor do I even agree with a lot of the principles they're talking about.

So what is up with the issue of the week? Why does everyone want to commit themselves to cause now?

What is it about our society that is making everyone want to be a part of something, but not making people want to think about the something they're going to be a part of.

Why is it better to pay a buck for a ribbon than it is to give a buck to a company that is dedicated to fixing society's ills? Or why is it better to know the government is paying less money even if the nation GNP grows slower because of it?

It reminds me of my gf, who I keep trying to explain taxes to. She'll say something random like "oh my friend is complaining because she has to pay 2k in taxes!" and I'll ask "well what percent of her income did she have to pay" and she'll say "I don't know and who cares, she had to pay 2K!!!!!!!!?!?!?!??OMG!?!?!?OMFG!2K!!!!"

:/

So then I start giving an example "if I make the same as her, and for the entirety of the year I pay 3.5k but I get 500 dollars back, and she only pays 3k, but she has to pay 2k at the end of the ye.." "You're better off", she suddenly blurted, interrupting me.

"What?" I ask, confused, surely she must misunderstand. but no, after repeated goings back and forth, she says it only matters what you pay at the end of the year, so in order to make her happy, they can increase her taxes but overtake throughout the year, then she'll be happy to get a refund, where as I, because I carefully watch the amount I pay in taxes on every paycheck, would apparently be less happy if I was her because even though I get interest on my extra income throughout the year, the fact that I pay at the end of the year makes me less successful.

:(

She hates that she says I look at her as dumb sometimes. She's getting her masters degree in applied statistics, I don't think shes dumb. But I do think shes irrational, and I think the people who keep spending time on these various special projects every couple week are really really irrational. They can think I'm irrational of course, thats the good part of rational discourse.

Oh wait, they're already irrational, so maybe I can't hope for rational discourse.

I hope there aren't protestors outside my house when I get home. ;)

birthday was a success

2009-04-13T15:00:52Z

So my birthday has come and gone, it began on Friday and wound down until Saturday night. I had a fantastic time, and I'm very appreciative of everyone who made it.

Sorry to everyone who wasn't invited, Anna didn't decide to do this until the last minute and it went from being just a few of the people I hang out with regularly to a few more people that I don't necessarily to a few more people that I work with and such. But really it was meant to be a smaller group, as it was I felt I needed to buy enough meat for everyone who might show up, then about a 3rd didn't show up so me and Anna are eating lots of bbq this week. ;) Inviting even more people A) wouldn't have fit in my garage and B) would cause me to waste even more food if a 3rd of those people didn't show up and C) would have cost me more, as it was I cleaned Wholefoods out of their buffalo meat hot dogs and most of their Nebraska 14% ground beef.

The party started off being social and then towards the end as people began leaving we switched to a 5 hour Zombies!!! game, it was pretty cool, each of us had a narrow window where we could have won, with 3 of us desperately trying to get to the heliport while Matt Matt tried to kill as many zombies for his army as possible. We held off Matt Matt from taking the last zombie he needed to win for about 2 hours while he managed to hold off all 3 of us from getting to the heliport, it helped that each of us was also trying to stop each other from getting to the heliport while also stopping Matt Matt. Finally Matt Matt won, like last time, it was just more brutal this time.

In addition to all of the gargoyle stuff my mom got me that I've been posting pictures of, I got star trek original crew pez dispensers from Josh, appropriate for the new movie coming out soon. Lots and lots of D&D minis, thanks to my D&D crew from Saturdays. They must not realize I'll be throwing all the monsters at them, mwa ha ha ha. A large box of Spiderman paraphenelia thanks to my client Lee Millard, owner of www.hairjunkie.com Some gift certificates for places I go to regularly, thanks Syb and thanks Nick!

My gf got me the blue dragon D&D mini, by far my favorite dragon from the D&D sets, I had one before, it was taken when I accidentally left it when I moved out of my old house before we finished unpacking, in addition to Season 1 of the latest TMNT cartoon series, which its my goal to get all 6 seasons. Its edgier, more based off the original comics I was a fan of when I was a kid. Sunday I watched 6 episode, it was as good as I thought it'd be.

My gf said I got more toys than many kids for my bday, I'm ok with that, I like toys. :)

Thanks everyone for an awesome birthday. :) Hopefully by next one I'll have a bigger house and can do a bigger party to invite more people so no one feels left out