If you haven't yet, go to JibJab.com and listen to and watch their version of "This Land is My Land". It's quite amusing and pretty close to fair.

This should keep you all busy till I have time to post again. :)

Things are going well. My pinkie is almost healed and I'm trying hard to keep myself from stressing it until four weeks have passed, in case I did break it. We finally replaced Jenny's driver-side mirror that got clipped off.

Jenny is studying for the CLEP tests and has registered for a class at the local community college (HVCC). I think she's taking a medieval history class. Hopefully she won't know everything beforehand and the class will be interesting.

I've been having a hard time finding books on medieval Russia, especially books with pictures of artifacts or paintings. My Osprey books (great books BTW) had little tiny pictures of fresco's and paintings in black and white. I wanted to document the use of leather scales for armor in medieval Russia. I googled on the captions, which worked great because Russain place names are rather distinct in Google-ville. Anyway...

I found a bunch of them. Sources: Olga's Gallery and the "Historic Architectural and Archeological Reserve Museum Staraya Ladoga"

The icon (painting) of St. George from the Dormition Cathedral is the best and yet is quite confusing for me. I can't figure out what the black spots are on the (apparently) leather scales. They could be holes but if so, they should have cord going through them. They could be rivets but if so, they shouldn't be black. (I know a little bit about armour making.) Something to ponder I guess.

Web color wizard. It's a webpage where you type in the hex value of one color and get colors that go with it. Go there, type in 123456 and hit the button.

Machine gun deployment as per (I think) a SeaBee handbook. The gaming world is still trying to figure out how to simulate machine guns. MG's unbalance most games because they typically fire bigger bullets then the average rifleman's gun and the fire more of them per second for more seconds. To keep a game balanced, most game designers will penalize the user of a machine gun with a slower movement rate and worse accuracy. As often as not games don't give machine guns more power than regular rifles.

In Natural Selection MG users walk slower and inexplicably do less damage to buildings than normal bullets. In Day of Defeat MGs are implemented very well. (I think, never used one and thank-the-universe, I've never been in a gun fight.) They are wildly inaccurate from the hip and super accurate when using a bipod. The problem is that DOD is already a game about flanking and sniping your opponent so MGs are wasted because everyone is already exploiting the weaknesses of MGs. In role playing games, MGs tend to not be dangerous enough. Battlelords(server down) gives them decent power but the rate of fire is closer to 50 rounds per minute than the realistic 1200 rpm. I'm thinking about making a house rule that everyone who is on the dangerous end of a deployed machine gun automatically gets hit with no dice rolling at all.

Now for some Babylon 5 which has an excellent grand story arc with great lesser arcs. I keep finding out about good TV shows years after they go off the air. It's enough to make me contemplate watching real TV. Hmmm, but then I'd be victimized by an endless stream of corporate begging "buy this", "shop here", "eat this, get fat", "take this pill, get thin", "ask you doctor about how you can be on MORE medication", "If you drive our car, chicks will dig you", "If you wear our pants, you'll have a great body and a perfect hairstyle. Chicks will then dig you." Hmmmmm, maybe buying DVDs of good shows is the way to go after all.

My little sister sent me a picture of my youngest niece. (Okay, no one knows her gender but she's easier to discuss if I guess.)

The excuses are many,
the motivations are few,
and the rewards are too distant to see.

Hello's to Stephanie, Autumn and Dave!

Rush is playing at SPAC in August, around the 8th if I remember. We shall endeavor to attend.

I've stopped going to Kung Fu for a while. I don't want to risk applying force to my broken pinkie by working out there. I also find myself more interested in Heavy Weapons fighting in the SCA. Master Torvald has assigned me command of the local unit (about 10 people) for Pennsic. It's a combination of a bit of an honor and a bit of a headache. The people who have agreed to follow me have done me an honor and now it's my responsibility to deploy them where they can have the most fun hitting people.

Some tatting information:
http://groups.msn.com/NeedleTattingTwo
http://www.paradisetreasures.com needle tatting
http://www.curbstone.ca tatting books and supplies
http://www.coatsandclark.com
http://www.picotnet.com
http://www.georgiaseitz.com/page7.html Online tatting classes
Information from posts at: http://forums.marthapullen.com/read.php?f=2&i=2191&t=2191

http://www.craftown.com/instruction/tatting.htm

I think I did break the last bone in my pinkie at Northern Region War Camp. *shrug* It mostly only hurts if I try to use it to apply force and the info online says that it should heal in 4 weeks. And by then, I'll have health insurance.

Jenny and I got some sunburn up at John Boyd Thatcher State Park this weekend. We went swimming and for a short walk. I need to swim more.

Pictures from Michigan where Jenny and I paid a flying visit to some of her prodigious family. Her mom and the kids joined us out there for the wedding of Jenny's uncle Rob to Marna .

Time.gov.
Note the nearly invisible link for Disable Java Animation in the bottom right corner.

Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has online sci-fi stories.

I'd like to personally invite the media to discuss the opinions stated by the presidential candidates and how their voting record in relation to those opinions. I am not working in the election business. I don't care how the numbers are going. I don't care how they think they'll pick up the Hispanic vote or the senior vote. Covering the machinations of the vote getting machine does not count as a fulfillment of the media's duty to give us information about the candidates that we are being presented with.

Next time you hear someone use the 'Go ahead, throw your vote away' argument, jump in and remind them that 1/2 of American voters don't vote at all. Ever. Voting for a third party is nothing compared to giving up on the democratic process. Half of America has NO voice in the course of the nation.

And yes Big Media, I'd love to hear about third and forth and fifth party candidates.

My apologies, apparently I didn't explain things very well. Jenny took some time alone to figure out what to she Wants to do with her life. As with many people, she finds it easier to think while driving. Toward this end she had a very pleasant and pretty drive out to Bangor, Maine and back. During this drive she determined that she was interested in trying out a variety of jobs through a temp agency, pursuing some college exemptions through CLEP testing and resuming her college career.

While the possibility did exist that she would decide to end our relationship, we have an understanding that as soon as either of us decide it's time, we need to communicate that clearly and quickly. I for one have a preference for people who can take care of themselves and who do what they need to in order to stay sane and active.

In conclusion, it's a good thing when people claim some time to listen to themselves. I love and respect her more for going.

Northern Region War Camp counts as a bad day this year. Looks like Jeff tore his other ACL (main ligament in the knee). I took a pole-arm whack to my pinkie. Ouch! It's funny colors and slightly swollen. And after I stopped fighting for the day I got my fighting headache and some kind of stomach bug/issue. I was pretty out of it for an hour or two. Phwellan looked out for us both. I've got all the best friends. :)

Jeff's knee injury is going to keep him off the field at Pennsic, the biggest, most fun event of the year. He's bummed and we're all bummed for him.

Jenny quit her job at the pool store and is on walkabout. When your soul tells you it's time to wander, you can't explain or ask for permission. She travels with all my love and trust and I expect her back when she's ready to be back.

Billy Joel Travellin' Prayer(lyrics)

She's back

June 2004 blog