“I mean, if the shit has truly hit the fan, and I’m in a starving group of people and I say, ‘ladies and gentlemen I don’t know where the next meal is coming from’. Well if some idiot’s response is ‘I identify as…’, I’m finishing their sentence with ‘dinner’.”
— Krakatoa on survival of the mentally fittestFirst one that cackles...
For future reference, when someone comes by complaining about a rogue DHCP server on their network, check under their desk first.
Car update
So the Camry Hybrid crossed 6,000 miles yesterday, just in time for me to drop it off for its first service. Average mileage over that period settled down to a pleasant 38.2 miles/gallon on Regular. My only complaint at the moment is that when the service-me-now timer goes off, the convenient in-dash display of range, mileage, etc, is overridden; you can get it back for a few seconds, and scroll through the different displays, but it always reverts to MAINT REQUIRED. I could find no way to reset the timer; I could add a dozen categories of new timers, but not clear one that’s already gone off.
For amusement, while I was waiting at the dealership, I sat behind the wheel of a Prius 4-door hatchback. Well, the idea was amusing, anyway; the actual experience was distinctly uncomfortable. Nice storage space with the rear seats down, though.
Tales From The Dog Side
Presented without comment. It just sort of popped into my head while driving to work…
Apologize to your physics teacher!
No, seriously, that’s the title of this novel:
Yes, that’s Akihabara underneath her, which means the camera shops just tripled the price on all telephoto lenses.
[first novel, came out about a month ago, turned up as a “people who liked Hashire, ute! also liked…”]
Portal 2+2
Scott and I ran through the co-op storyline today. Lots of fun, although we got stuck good and hard twice, once because we simply couldn’t figure out how to combine the available portal surfaces to get the second player across, and the second time because the solution we came up with was so complicated that we knew we had to be overthinking it and missing something simple (“no, that really is how you do it”).
As usual, it was a lot easier with tablespeak than it would have been with any manner of chat session.
Pity they couldn’t come up with a way to work more Cave Johnson dialog into it…
[Update: belatedly, it occurred to me that the people who are claiming they solved the co-op puzzles alone, only needing a partner to satisfy the “both present at the exit” requirement, are full of shit. For some of the puzzles, getting one player to the exit is relatively easy; the actual challenge is getting the second one across. That was the exact situation that stumped us: I made it to the exit, and could no longer create the portals that Scott would need to use the same method; we had to figure out a different path to the top, using both sets of portals.]
Sprint, shoot!
The author of Asobi ni Iku Yo! has another active series of novels, Hashire, ute!, which has a manga adaptation running, and given the subject matter, likely an anime series in the works. Judging from the cover art (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), the genre is “military moeblob”.
Book five has a “look inside” link, and the random page it selected for me featured a phrase glossed with the katakana マジノ・ライン …
His most recent release looks to be the start of Yet Another series, Cattail Output!, the cover of which features two schoolgirls with very short skirts, one with glasses, the other with a handgun.
Reasons to stay out of New York City, #551
Being arrested because a cop thought you might be carrying a pocket knife. Not brandishing it, not openly using a clearly-illegal type of knife, but having a slight bulge in your front pocket suggesting that there’s a knife clipped there.
All part of an ambitious District Attorney’s plan to crack down on the scourge of modern pocket knives purchased at major retailers by law-abiding citizens. Because if it looks scarier than a butter knife, it must be a criminal tool that no normal person would own. This may sound familiar to anyone who’s seen the laundry list of cosmetic features used to define “assault weapons”.
Personally, I carry a 555 and a 710, so no Big Apple for me!
Now for the real question. Is this District Attorney:
A. running for re-election.
B. pretending to be "tough on crime".
C. raising revenue with easy arrests.
D. improving cops' personal knife collections.
E. ruining lives with bullshit convictions.
F. diverting police resources from actual crime.
G. all of the above
