Foundation

For a while now I’ve been playing Civilization: Revolutions on Chieftain, working through and getting each type of win for each civilization. I play on Chieftain while exercising because it’s easy and I won’t get frustrated ever, which is a bad thing when I’m trying to keep my mind occupied and keep myself going the full hour on the elliptical.

Well, with my Culture win for the English yesterday, that task is complete. Now I guess I’m going to revert to a combination of Picross, Etrian Odyssey, and SimCity on the elliptical. Civ was perfect for that, though.

I’m never going to get in my 200 hours of Makai Kingdom at this rate. Today my CDs came from RosenQueen USA: Netherworld Harmony: Inauguration and Phantom Brave Wii. Well, technically I bought Phantom Brave Wii, but I only did so to get the soundtrack that came with it as I already own Phantom Brave PS2.

Of course, the real bad part is that I’ll now be tempted to replay Phantom Brave on the Wii since the We Meet Again version (We, Wii…) includes new chapters. Another 200 hours re-acquiring Laharl, Etna, Flonne, and the rest? When I already have Disgaea 2 and 3 in the queue? Oh no.

Nippon Ichi soundtrack collection now up to four, as the two join the Disgaea 3 CD that came with that game, and the La Pucelle CD I had a while ago. NIS passes Square, stuck at three (Chrono Trigger The Brink of Time, Chrono Trigger Original Soundtrack, Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack).

The mean* person who runs Blueshelled suggested I start using Twitter if I want to drum up business for myself. So here I am.

* She’s not really mean. She just pretends.

You may recall that during the Bush administration and the Presidential campaign, Gizmodo was constantly harping on wiretaps of terrorists. Specifically, Gizmodo claimed that the Bush-era program constituted “domestic spying,” that telecommunications firms spied as well, and that they ‘won’ out over the American people on the matter.

They were practically in hysterics, hiding under sheets and crying into a camera “Leave the phones alone, Bushitler” over the matter.

So imagine my surprise when I find out today that when Nokia is being protested for taking part in a genuine domestic spying program of the Iranian Islamofascist regime, they don’t care. It’s not even worth a post. It’s so unimportant they go out of their way to say they didn’t post on it.

So, to recap: American firms aiding the US government in spying on calls between foreign-based terrorists and their US-based cells: a crime for which they must not get immunity. Foreign firm aiding the Iranian government in oppressing the opposition: “Nokia’s role here seems to be the same as a car company’s role in a drunk-driving incident.”

Clearly the signal here is that the Iranians just don’t really need rights, unless they’re terrorists plotting attacks against Americans. After all, they’re only foreign Muslims. They don’t even have a European complexion. Gawker must think they’re barely even people, which is why they opposed liberating brown-skinned Muslims from Saddam Hussein, and they oppose brown-skinned Muslims from liberating themselves from the Islamic Revolution.

I’m a sucker for things I see in shows. I tried Pocky because of Youko‘s constant snacking on it, and now I’ve tried Ramune because of Sasshi‘s drinking of it.

I drank the original flavor on the way home. I’m not sure how to describe it. Not bad though. Next up later is the Strawberry flavor.

What’s most notable about it though is the packaging. On top of the plastic top (the blue on the original flavor) is an upper cap. to open it up, you take off the plastic seal, break a plunger out of the (green) cap, and shove it into the plastic top. That pushes a marble out of the top and against the narrow area in the glass, where it can’t get lower. Pretty complicated, but I think it gets some of the excess fizz out to drink it through that set up.

I picked up the PowerShot SX110 IS yesterday, with the idea of it being useful for website work as well as any activism I can find to do in the area.

It seems like a lot of camera for the $225 + tax I paid for it.

So while I was waiting for a grep to finish today, I decided to get proper Volume icons on my Blackberry. Finding a Blackberry Bold icon for the Bold’s internal storage was easy. But nowhere around could I find an icon for a MicroSD card, to represent the card I have in the Bold.

So, I made my own MicroSD icon. It’s an SVG graphic. Enjoy. I know I am:

I think the next step is to edit the Blackberry icon to include the theme I have installed on it.

Caleb Howe is a fantastic reporter. He finds things. He reports facts. He causes trouble for the Democrats. It’s great stuff.

There’s just a catch: he needs money. Unless people give him money to do the work, he can’t pay his bills and feed his family. Then he continues to find other work, which takes time that could be spent on reporting.

So Caleb is raising money at his site Acticons and at RedState. I hope someday he’s able to secure some funding to just become a full time nuisance with a camera.

And of course, the motivated activist and talented writer Moe Lane is always raising money. He deserves it. His work moderating at RedState alone is a job that helps the movement by helping make the site strong. The fact that he’s also a practiced public speaker and witty writer, and uses those talents to lead and motivate activists for our cause, is a bonus. We get two hats on one guy. And both hats cost money. So I hope people buy lots of stuff through his Amazon affiliation. Who motivates the motivator? Us.

And, finally, at Caleb’s suggestion I made my own tip jar. There are so many things I wish I could buckle down and do for RedState, but starting a business, it’s just impossible to commit that kind of time. I have to try to get work for that, plus keep money coming in. My RS time has a cap as a result, which is why my writing on the site has virtually vanished. So any generosity is greatly appreciated, and will help.

I committed to putting the time into RedState when the readers donated for RedState 3.0. I’m honoring that commitment, but helping me gives me more time to do that.

So Firefox has been acting up on me more and more lately. Weird slowdowns and stutters. I’d been suspecting Firefox 3.5 in general to be at fault, but just this morning it finally hit me what the pattern of slowdowns indicated: It was choking on the history.

Realizing that, I immediately dropped my history size from 90 days to 30, and it’s working well now. If you get weird, annoying slowdowns and stutters, do that.

It came to my attention in Atlanta that some people might be curious about what it looks like to work on RedState. There’s no magical server room, or at least, none that’s anywhere near me. That’s with some third party company in Texas, while Eagle’s people are in DC and I’m in California.

But that does leave the matter of my workstation. I don’t know if penguin2 is the only one who’s curious or not, but here it is. Click for full size picture, and there’s a legend below the fold.

1. Sennheiser EH 150 headphones. Padded and useful for watching television/listening to music from computer/playing games for extended periods over the sound of the air conditioner to my left.
2. Wii Sports Resort for the Wii and Makai Kingdom for the Playstation 2. The former’s in my Wii and the latter’s in my Playstation 3
3. Wii Remote with Classic Controller and Motion Plus
4. Universal remote (controling 4 devices), plus AC remote
5. External hard drive (from my old G5, now used for Time Machine) with card readers
6. Samsung 192N 19″, 1280×1024 LCD display. Unused since replacing my G5 with the iMac)
7. 20″ iMac. Dual core, 4GB RAM.
8. Kinesis Freestyle keyboard. Mac model
9. Playstation 3 controller.
10. Etymotic Research ER 4P headphones in case.
11. Casio DB-35H watch
12. Notes for a poker experiment I made, and have since discarded
13. Kensington Orbit Optical trackball
14. Wacom Graphire 2 4×5 tablet
15. GameScience dice. 5d6 red. 3d6 blue.
16. Samsung 912N 19″, 1280×1024 LCD display. No, the 912 and 192 aren’t typos.
17. Americans for Prosperity notebook
18. Receipt for Lucky Star Volume 6 from Amazon
19. IRS paperwork nonsense
20. Logitech headset. El Cheapo I bought when my last El Cheapo fell apart after an hour long conference.
21. Safeword for Checkpoint widget. Used to get into VRWC computer network.
22. Kinesis keypad. Mac model.

Sorry if this punctures any bubbles. It’s not entirely enough like a Bond villain’s lab. I do plan to buy a new desk (well, an actual desk and not a table) next month or so, though. Not sure how much that’ll help though. I’ll have to rely on the blamstick to get by now that the aura’s gone.