Political Moron

I’m downright ashamed to admit that when we moved, I completely forgot to re-register with the County Clerk to vote, so I am not registered to vote in Solano County. I may still be registered to vote in Yolo County; I’ll have to call the Yolo County Clerk and check with them.

This is [...]

The Weather Station

Well, according to this test, I am a chaotic good elven ranger/fighter (see below for more information about that). That works for me. I’m naturally inclined to play that kind of character when I play Dungeons and Dragons anyway. Although I would probably choose a human character rather than an elven character. I just have [...]

The Tragedy of Traditional Cooking

I’m sitting here now and actually trying to write a short story. I haven’t tried to do any serious creative writing since NaNoWriMo back in november, and I’d forgotten how difficult it can be to get started. I had the idea for "Mother Tsan-Chan" a couple of nights ago, and spent a couple of hours [...]

From the Secret Diary of…

There have been many times when I’ve been in the house by myself, and heard a noise coming from upstairs that sounds just like typing. This often happens late at night, when Jennifer’s asleep and I’m downstairs reading, or during the day when Jennifer is at work and I’m puttering around the house doing chores [...]

The Briefest of Clarifications

Okay, so there were these three penguins, right? Penguin Number One says to Penguin Number Two, "Start the car!" And Penguin Number Three says, "Boy, those bells are loud."
Waa haa haa! Ha ha! Ha! Ha ha ha haaa! Hoo, sometimes I kill myself, I really do.
Well, okay, so sometimes my sense [...]

Overheard Self-Talk

"Nothing has changed, you know."

"Huh?"

"I said, nothing’s changed."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, look at yourself. You’re trying to cop a new attitude. You’re trying to fix your thinking. You’re making a desperate attempt to get over yourself."

"What, like that’s not good?"

"It would be [...]

My Name is Richard, and I’m a Thoughtaholic

Did I confuse you with the extracts from my diary? I’m so terribly sorry.

This past weekend I was at DunDraCon XIX in San Ramon, California. Unlike Dragon*Con, which Jennifer and I went to back in September (a week before It happened), DunDraCon is focused entirely on role-playing games. I started going regularly [...]

Excerpts from My Diary

Saturday:

Dear Diary,

Today I mostly just sat around talking with people. Though I knocked off a couple of spies in my lair, I wasn’t very successful at detonating the unexploded bombs in France with the mad cows. I almost finished, though.

Then I got a call summoning me to San [...]

Bean Trick: Or, Another Three Reasons Why My Wife is Cooler than Yours

Usually, when I decide it’s time to zark a computer to death, it’s my Linux box that bears the brunt of my incompetence. Last week, though, I booted into Windows to check out an image I wanted to work on, and discovered that I was unable to hook up to the Internet through Windows 2000. [...]

… And then the blasphemous entity laboriously slid its way across the barren landscape

H. P. Lovecraft was never really appreciated in his own time, you know. For some reason, his stories about ancient, uh, blasphemous creatures — Elder Gods, Fungi from Yuggoth, the Great Race of Yith, Cthulhu, Shub Niggurath, and the foul Nyarlathotep — just didn’t really strike a chord with the general reading audience of the [...]

Carburetor Mechanic

A carburetor mixes air and fuel in a car engine in order to provide just the right mix to make the fuel ignitable so that the engine can work. It’s a very important part of the whole internal combustion thing. But in newer cars, the carburetor has been replaced by the fuel injection system; in [...]