It’s possible I’m reading the wrong thing into the title of this magazine feature, but given the “no boyfriends” lifestyle imposed on you by your management, can I say that I at least hope you have access to a Throbbing Accessory Catalog?

Good news: the building we’re moving into has never been occupied by another company. Bad news: it’s never been occupied by another company. In other words, there isn’t a single incoming network cable of any kind, and the few people willing to wire the place up are all running a bit behind schedule. If we had something better than a 3G modem, we could at least move a few people over there early, but so far nobody’s delivered. (…and a firmly-extended middle finger to Comcast, who offered us a great deal and then tried to get us to pay more than $10,000 to extend their network so it could reach the building)

Fortunately, the new place isn’t that far from the old place, and even more fortunately, the EnGenius ENH202 is trivial to configure and costs less than $100. And unlike the $300+ wireless bridge we tried, it actually powers up when you plug it in!

And it works quite nicely so far. No serious environmental sealing, so in a long-term installation you’d want to cover it in some fashion, but we’ll be happy if it lasts through Christmas.

[Update: damn this thing worked out nicely, making the move a lot less painful.]

“Pictures of Catgirls make real life seem bland and dull.
Pictures of Catgirls help you through the night.
Pictures of Catgirls, safer than real women.
Pictures of Catgirls make it all seem right.”

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Yes, the ultimate panty fight will be live on stage in Tokyo from November 30th to December 9th, with the role of Hakufu played by a talented thespian most recently seen here hawking whipped cream and jello, Shizuka Nakamura.

A modest sample of Shizuka’s qualifications for the role is presented below; more here, if your heart can take it.

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When engineers sleep,
catgirl breeding runs amuck;
Steven, get well soon.

Also:

Japanese spam tries to get you to join pay web sites that offer access to women. Chinese spam tries to get you to open virus-infected Excel spreadsheets.

While sitting at home being sick and miserable, I loaded up Skyrim and tried playing a more magic-oriented character (short version: mages are very squishy in the universe of the Elder Scrolls). Along the way, I picked up a quest that I didn’t do on my previous run through the game, The Break of Dawn.

In this quest, the goddess-like being Meridia commands you to become her champion and reclaim her temple from the undead forces of the necromancer Malkoran. This is a pretty typical dungeon crawl, and that’s the problem. SOP in a dungeon crawl is to steal anything that isn’t nailed down: spellbooks, potions, chests of gold and gems, offerings, divine relics, contents of burial urns, and of course, everything carried by your vanquished foes.

Except this time you’re looting the temple of the goddess who not only gave you the job, but also lifted you thousands of feet into the air to ensure you felt properly motivated. And in addition to all the usual things to loot, the place is full of the Desecrated Corpses of her worshippers, and they were all loaded with cash, easily ten times as much as the undead monsters you have to wipe out. There are so many of them that in some places you have to kick the emptied husks aside to reach the next batch.

As soon as you finish the job, before you can stagger off to the nearest NPC vendor, she lifts you high into the air again, and thanks you for cleaning her the place out.