Because it took me about 4 hours to figure out how the hell to do this, to add a new topic in the Oblivion CS:
Go to Character\Quests…
Click the Topics tab
Right click in the EditorID section, click Add Topic
Right click in the big list of topics, click New.
No, nothing else in the interface works even remotely like this. Thanks Beth, really fucking appreciate it.
Also, your version of level scaling sucks ass. I just want you to know that.
For the rest of you, who are perhaps not quite so invested in this as I am, here’s a funny link for you. Just let it run. You’ll laugh.
That, or Darth Fuzzy comes for you. Your choice.
Sunset out of my window tonight. You can thank Sarah for the pic. It’s a good one.
Well, I promised you all something, so how about some trip bloggage, so click the link and partake.
For those of you who enjoy such things, high res copies of the pics are available upon request. Let me know.
Also a bit of useless trivia. I drove on the following highways or interstates.
OR 99W (OR)
OR 34 (OR)
I-5 (OR)
I-84 (OR, CT)
WA 395 (WA)
I-90 (WA, ID, MT, NY, MA)
I-94 (MT, ND, MN)
I-694 (MN)
I-35 (MN)
US 8 (MN, WI, MI)
US 2 (MI)
I-75 (MI)
I-475 (MI)
I-69 (MI)
Highway 402 (Ontario)
Highway 401 (Ontario)
Highway 403 (Ontario)
Queen Elizabeth Way (Ontario)
Highway 420 (Ontario)
I-190 (NY)
I-91 (MA, CT)
I-95 (CT)
This totals around 3,260 miles. Give or take a bit. Took seven days, counting the time I stopped off in Michigan.
Made it through a whole bunch of listening type stuff. All 26 hours or whatever it is of the BBC radio version of Lord of the Rings, the entire Star Wars radio play (13 hours, I think), the audiobook of HF Saint’s The Invisible Man (I hear the movie sucked, but I want to see it anyway someday), and maybe another 10 hours of assorted tapes and CDs. The whole audiobook while driving thing works a lot better than you might imagine.
I was on I-90 in 5 different states. Took a detour in Montana, got back on in New York.
Even longer detour on I-84. Got off in Oregon to go into Washington, got back on (on accident, no less) in Connecticut.
A couple of the three-digit interstates I actually travelled the entire length of. I almost travelled the entire New York Thruway, as well, save for a small stretch from Buffalo to I-190.
One of these days, I’m going to steal an idea from Laurent, and put all of this on a map on my wall. Throw in some of those old trips out West, should be interesting.
It’s no secret that the stars are falling from the sky
it’s no secret that our world is in darkness tonight
they say the sun sometimes eclipsed by a moon
you know I don’t see you when she walks in the room
It’s no secret that a friend is someone who lets you help
it’s no secret that a lair won’t believe in anyone else
they say a secret is something you tell one other person
so I’m telling you, child
Love, we shine like a burning star
we’re falling from the sky…tonight
A man will beg, a man will crawl
on the sheer face of love
like a fly on a wall
it’s no secret at all
It’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest
It’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success
every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
all kill their inspiration and sing about their grief
oh love
Love, we shine like a burning star
we’re falling from the sky…tonight
A man will rise, a man will fall
from the sheer face of love
like a fly from a wall
it’s no secret at all
love, we shine like a burning star
we’re falling from the sky tonight
love, we shine like a burning staf
we’re falling from the sky tonight
a man will rise, a man will fall
from the sheer face of love
like a fly from a wall
a man will rise, a man will fall
from the sheer face of love
like a fly from a wall
it’s no secret at all
It’s no secret that the stars are falling from the sky
the universe exploding ’cause of one man’s lie
look, I gotta go, yeah I’m runnin’ out of change
there’s a lot of things if I could I’d rearrange
…Yeah, I promise real bloggage next time. With actual content. Later. Not now. Later.
It’s baaaaaaaaack… And I quote from cell phone messages, for great justice:
Me: Remember, kids. Friends don’t let friends take on ludicrous papers. So next time I pick a topic this dumb, I want you to hit me as hard as you can.
Sarah: See, my secret violent tendencies come in handy!
Me: Exactly. And think on the bright side. Now that you’ve made me get this phone, you get to look forward to Evil Paper of Doom text messages!
Sarah: I see your e.p.o.d and raise you my russian fiction paper due tom’w, latin translation due tues., and philosophy paper due wed., plus normal work & mtgs. …plus my now-finished history paper due t., latin midterm thurs, and logic p’set due friday. Plus a personal life. Midterm week, blech.
Me: Oh, you triumph over my workload, but not my nostalgic EPOD humor or the density of this particular reading material.
Because, well, really folks:
“The WAN PHY differs from the LAN PHY by including a simplified SONET/SDH framer in the WAN Interface Sublayer (WIS). Because the line rate of SONET OC-192/SDHSTM-64 is within a few percent of 10 Gbps, it is relatively simple to implement a MAC that can operate with a LAN PHY at 10 Gpbs or with a WAN PHY payload rate of approximately 9.29 Gbps.”
If you figure out what that means, let me know.
(Actually I do know, which scares me.)
Cool factor: 10 gigabit ethernet, which is…fast. Very fast. And a random white paper saying, in effect, “Well guys, now that we’ve got 10 gig down, who wants to try for 100?”
You say ‘There’s a white paper here for 100 gig ethernet.’
Samson says ‘Sorry, Samson is busy picking up brain bits from his keyboard. Please leave a message after the *BEEP*’
You say ‘I’m not even sure what you’d do with that.’
Samson says ‘Run a porn site, of course’
You say ‘Well, yes.’
This may be the coolest thing ever seen by mankind. It’s so freaking cool I can barely restrain myself. I mean, an entire Lego aircraft carrier? How awesome is that, I ask you.
Legos – seriously the coolest toy ever. EVER.
As many of you may be aware, I’ve got this graduate assistantship at school, which pretty much consists, thus far, of me sitting in classes learning about our craptacular online course software and getting paid for it. I like the pay part, though the software is something only Linux geeks could love – very powerful, IF you know how to use it, which we obviously, well, don’t. I also managed to break Macromedia Fireworks in a number of interesting and non-reproducable ways today, too. And then when I tried to break it to show the instructor, I broke it in a different but reproducable way. Go figure.
I also got a desk, which I find amusing if only because I have little use for such a thing yet. It was also quite entertaining to move, since it was one of those big, oldschool steel desks. You know the type, fought at Jutland, won the war for the Allies. Made back when desks were battleships. Two of us couldn’t begin to lift it, so we turned it upside down and slid it, which worked great, until we were resoundingly defeated by the double doors in our destination room, one of which decided to jam, which we finally defeated with four people and a screwdriver. So I now have a desk. Which was, interestingly, filled with…things…below the bottom drawer, hidden from all until I dug them out. Papers dating from 1998 (some as far back as 1985!). Yellowing (!) overhead transparencies, which may perhaps have helped the desk in its fight against Nazi tyrrany.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m tired. Sue me.
But not, Sarah, THAT tired. The caffeine, as you well understand. Do do do do do, always Coca-Cola, and all that.
I have two more fairly image-intensive posts for you. One of them is the long-delayed cross-country trip essay, which has some good pictures of Large Rocky Things and also Water. The other is the And This Is Where I Live post, which involves less rocks and less water but more Tiny Shower of Doom pictures.
Anybody have any preferences as to which comes first?
Because you should read the first entry, well, first.
Sarah’s shot of Grand Central Station is far, far better that mine.
Sarah’s everyone at the fountain pic, which shows that I look like a fool in my natural picture-taking state.
Self Portrait #1, from Sarah’s camera. Gotta love Bryan’s “Oh no!” gasp and my expression, which is whatever it is. Sarah is, as usual, perfectly photogenic.
Self Portrait #2, from my camera. Everyone else looks ok, but I look like a skinhead or something. Because how often do I look ok in pictures? Yeah, exactly.
“You guys are acting like children!” Sarah exclaimed. Then wanted a picture. Off-camera, I tried to push her into the fountain. Because what’s the point of going to college if you can’t act like a 5 year old?
I knew, pretty much from the start of this whole East Coast adventure, that eventually Sarah (Regina, for those who weren’t aware) was going to drag me off to New York City. So you can imagine my unsurprise and indeed some amusement when the idea was broached that we go Friday. Several permutations were tossed about, including one where I was bound to meet more or less everyone Sarah knows, but what we settled on was that I would meet up with her at the train station in New Haven, whereupon we would meet up with Bryan (TNK of Tonto and this blog fame) at Penn Station in NYC, whereupon we would tour an entirely unsuspecting New York City.
The plan was for us to meet at the station before our 11:57 train. No problem. Got stuck behind a bus going in, but still plenty of time to spare. But wait! If you thought driving in New Haven downtown was bad, try parking there. Fortunately, I finally found some on the 6th level of a nearby garage, but we cut things a little close there.
I shant bore you with the train ride, though I enjoyed it. Instead, we’ll begin with Grand Central Station:
It was much lighter than it appears, of course, and you can’t really see the neat ceiling with constellations on it. Suffice it to say that as train stations go, it’s pretty neat, though it felt a little small in comparison to, say, Waterloo Station. From there we caught the subway (it still confuses me) over to Penn Station to pick up Bryan, which was accomplished, notwithstanding the much-complained-about-by-Sarah confusingness of the station (it kinda is).
Also in one station or another, we saw this:
I was like “Whoa, that’s bizzare. Must take picture!” at which it was explained to me that if I attempted to take a picture of every weird thing in NYC, I’d be there a long time. However, I replied, there are some things that pictures MUST be taken of, such as this or the head of Richard Nixon on the body of a dog. I was not met with rebuttal.
Our first stop was Greenwich Village, where it immediately became apparent that Sarah was either trying to get us killed by traffic, or strand us in New York City by ourselves (keeping up with her is sometimes impossible, to understate things). Bryan and I picked up on this, and for the rest of the day we threw back and forth accusations about who was trying to kill who. Thankfully, I survived, I am sure because I was Sarah’s ride home. But. Look at this picture from our lunch stop (good pizza, yay!), and observe teh evil!
Undeniable, I am sure. The eyes, the expression, the posture – all of them scream “I’m going to KILL YOU! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!”
So we were wary.
After several brief incidents with traffic (and teaching Sarah about that new invention, the stoplight), plus a record store with WAY too many U2 bootlegs (where I picked up two NIN CDs and the first Jane’s Addiction album), we arrived at Washington Square Park, where you can observe Bryan and Sarah cavorting in the fountain:
(Sarah has the presumably better version with all three of us. Also the great pic of Bryan and I acting like jackasses in front of a rather more stern-looking statue of Garibaldi)
Then we went to the Strand, which is a Very Large Bookstore (I still think Powell’s is bigger, or at least their sci-fi section is, which is what counts ;). Being me, I emerged with 3 Very Large Books (but at half-price, how do you lose), and would have emerged with an awesome collection of early maps, had it not weighed more than me and cost $150. I almost did anyway, because it was THAT cool. Seriously.
Some more wandering around brought us here:
The blue storage container is actually a store. Clever. There’s smoke coming out that hole on the building for some reason, and I have no idea what the numbers do. Just smile and nod. Smile and nod.
Some discussion on everyone’s part led us to make for the Empire State Building, which we arrived at just at dusk. Trying to look up at the top from in front of it is a pretty crazy experience, but worth the try. Obviously we went up top for the look, which cost us $16 and a metal detector visit, which let me just say that trying to put on your belt in front of God and man after having to take it off for the detector is a singularly humiliating experience.
The view, OTOH. I can’t really describe it, so I’m not even going to try:
[EDIT] Due to popular demand, here is a high-res version.[/EDIT]
And the awesome one:
And the high quality version for great justice.
Also the obligatory people shot:
(Alas, the me/Bryan and Bryan/Sarah versions didn’t come out near so well)
From there, we walked to Times Square, which is very bright, glittery, and has some…interesting sights:
And the crowd favorite:
Yes, that’s a recruiting center in the middle of Times Square. For great amusement.
From there, we rode the subway back to where we had just been, and went for a quick bite (it was past 8pm by this time, and we had trains) at Papaya Dog, where, as is tradition, everyone but me ate normally, and I ate fries, because I am me (this subject provided us with much mealtime discussion, to be sure).
Also seen on the subway were plenty of this sort of thing, though rarely right out on the platform:
And when we got to Grand Central Station once again after having dropped Bryan off at Penn, we were greeted by the either Spanish or Columbian Navy band (we asked, but weren’t sure), playing in honor of Columbus Day. It was way cool, and a very fitting end to our stay.
And then we got on our train and went back to New Haven.
(And Sarah’s take on things)
Other random things:
Bryan’s having travelled from Bleecker Street, Newark to Bleecker Street, New York.
Bryan’s several mentions of his sure demise upon return to the unsavory streets of Newark.
Seriously, Sarah tried to get us killed by traffic that much. And get us lost. Or stranded. She’d be very heartbroken to be stranded in New York forever, I’m sure.
Couldn’t find a copy of Tigana in the Strand, for the lose.
Found a lot of Joy Division in Bleecker Street Records, but didn’t leave with any, because I’m dumb.
Driving in New Haven at night still totally sucks. You have no idea.