A brief episode of “You know you may have been using computers too long when…”
Consider the following:
- My MUD stuff is all stored in C:\Solan\ (the actual MUD named changed to Alsherok circa 1998)
- I still have C:\Temp\ dir (fashionable in about 1995)
- All my D&D bookmarks are in a folder labeled “AD&D” (and half of them were circa 1997)
- My Battletech bookmarks include David Low’s page (for various rec.games.mecha things circa 1995-6)
- Not to mention Sarna.net as Slayer’s Battletech Page (circa 1997)
- My Games bookmarks are great for this? Cyberjag? 1998. Caesar II – The Ultimate Site? I’m not even sure. 1996? Earlier? Apparently at some point I updated my Apolyton link from whatever its previous 1996 Civilization II incarnation was, but I updated it to the Call To Power site from 1999.
- Dejanews was a big deal in, what, 1998 or so?
- The Adventurer’s hiatus in 1999 was apparently such a big deal, I still have the defunct news archive bookmarked.
There are some more, but I think you get the point.
In other news, I’m working on getting the blog out of 2003. There WILL be a Wordpress version…at some point. When I make div tags work. It might take a while. Just saying.
So Wednesday, as it happens, was my last day working at Buley. Rather unlike some other jobs I’ve had, I’m going to miss the whole tech services gig, although I can in some sense look forward to similar work anon, thanks to my hopefully-coming-soon degree, but more on that later.
Got a bit of a party thrown for me on Monday, and they gave me a very nice pen and a very nice mug, and I got my picture taken with people, and that was all good. Various people were pretty impressed/enthusiastic about my special project paper (Nancy: “Have you seriously ever thought about teaching/academia? You’d be great at it!”), which was nice. It’s one thing to get good grades, which I have by and large done, and it’s entirely another thing to know that practicing professionals think that you’re doing a good job, and to know that you are impressing these same people. Confidence boosting and all that.
So that was pretty much that. I’ll miss the people, and I worked with and for some great folks. Miss the work, too, but as I say, I’ll do much of it again. I learned a lot here though, and had a pretty good time doing it, and you definitely can’t say that about all jobs. Pretty good trip.
I can no longer hear my computer at all. This is a strange experience, but I assure you that, unlike several of our previous technological adventures, this one ends quite well, and not in spasms of computerized agony such as you may be used to, given the last 6 months or so.
So, for the last three computer builds, the first of which was so long ago (2002) that it got written as a forum post at Tonto, I’ve been using a Lian-Li PC-61 case. It’s a damn fine case – lightweight, everything easily removable, looks great, and so on. It has a few big sins, however, chief among them that it was louder than hell and didn’t actually cool anything when the room temperature was very high.
So I went back to Newegg and ordered a Lian-Li PC-K7B. I’m overjoyed with the thing so far, and I’m going to proceed to tell you why at length. You have been warned.
Here’s the inside, in all its glory:
Lots and lots of goodness here, but:
- The motherboard tray is even easier to get out than in days of yore – 2 thumbscrews and it lifts out the right side. They’ve replaced the previous super-annoying clip-in spacers with ones that screw in, which meant almost literally dropping the motherboard in.
- One of the annoying bits about my old case was that all the individual USB wires were, well, individual, which meant a lot of fiddling every time I did anything with them. Thankfully this has changed, and sticking all the front panel stuff in took almost no time. The only thing I’m sad about is that my front panel 1394 connection is dead, as there’s no motherboard support. Oh well. I wasn’t using it anyway.
- On that same note, the fans all have actual fan connectors now, so I can finally run them all off the motherboard. Yay.
- So there’s a couple of holes in the motherboard tray there that lead back to the dead space behind said tray, which means all my cables I’m not using (about half of them), are nowhere to be seen. This is fantastic.
- Those big grey clips in the optical drive slots that look like they can hold the drive all by themselves? They can.
- The HD cage, which features the ability to slide in drives on rubber spacers? Yeah, that works really great, too. I guess I sort of wish I had had more L-ended SATA cables, but as you can see I made do just fine. As a bonus, notice all that space for that monster video card. In the PC-61, the card was actually slightly INSIDE the HD cage.
- Those fans are a trio of 120mms, and so far they’re doing what they’re supposed to – keeping things cool, and doing so silently. I’m not lying to you when I tell you that I am literally unable to hear my computer running now, and the only way I can tell is by the little blue power LED in front (which itself is much nicer than the gigantor one in the PC-61). Did you know I had birds outside? I didn’t either. The difference between 5 80mm and 3 120mm is like night and day and is, frankly, somewhat disconcerting. I keep coming in the room and wondering why the computer is off, even though I can tell that it isn’t.
- I finally have front panel audio that works, and works great. This means I can finally retire the Radio Shack cables I’ve been using as reacharounds since about 1997. I can also retire the headphone jack for my Logitech speakers, which was bearly audible if you cranked the volume all the way up. Yay.
So I’m pretty satisfied. The whole thing pretty much put itself together, and it’s working great.
I do, however, have the odd few nitpicks:
- They abandoned the use of thumbscrews in places where there had been some previously, namely in the expansion slot covers and the HD cage. Particularly in the case of the slot covers, I imagine I’ll be sad about it eventually.
- While the front panel stuff works great, I am less than enthused about its placement on the top of the case. I much preferred the PC-61 layout, which put the power buttons in the traditional mid-case location, and the USB ports at the bottom of the case. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but where the front panel is now is where I’m used to having my CD Pile of Doom, which I guess I need to move.
- I guess the HD cage works less well if you move it. I wouldn’t know – I didn’t move it.
These are, however, ridiculous nitpicks which are nullified by the fact that this case is otherwise so completely awesome. You could do a whole lot worse than this, I assure you.
Today’s post brought to you by viral invaders, which are at this very moment having a nice chat with my immune system. As of right now, my immune system appears to be getting the better end of the deal, thanks to our friends Advil and Robitussin.
So instead of doing what I set out to do last night, namely find some 4th edition D&D tables to speed my prep work, I got sucked into a bunch of people talking in various places about the various editions of (A)D&D, why they were good, why they were bad. Since it occurs to me that I have yet to talk about 4th edition in any meaningful sense, I’ll use that discussion as a springboard to talk about the game as a whole, culminating in the various 4e games we’ve played thus far.
AD&D 1st Edition:
I more or less skipped 1e by, coming to D&D as I did in the 90s. The exception to this is my beloved 1978 Player’s Handbook, which got me into the hobby even though I had barely any idea of what it was saying. Still don’t. You’ll hear a lot of guys that still love and play 1e because they love the Gygaxian prose and somehow feel that 2e killed off something in the flavor of the game. I wouldn’t know. I like to be able to find my rules in the book, thanks.
AD&D 2nd Edition:
So, plus sides to 2e were the cleaned up rules, which were good for the time, the fast, clean and simple rules and play (still the only edition where I could confidentaly make up stats for guys on the fly), and the preponderance of supplements, which are some of the best the game has ever seen. Kits were a great idea, and so were specialty priests, and we’re still suffering the lack of both of them.
On the bad side, some of those mechanics in this day and age really are that bad. I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t miss the saving throw charts, THAC0, or the non-unified XP mechanic. Every time I think about reprising 2e in some form, all I have to do is think about these things, and I am immediately satisfied with with not running it.
On the ugly side, well, balance was…what balance? My memories are pretty colored by the fact that we were all munchkin powergamers back in the 90s, but no matter how you cut it, it was bad unless you rode very strict herd on your players.
D&D 3rd Edition/D&D 3.5 Edition:
So, the plus sides of 3e are pretty great. Fixed more or less all the balance issues, gave the game great flexibility, and made it a fantastically playable game as long as you were willing to deal with all the math.
On the downside, well, PrCs still aren’t kits or specialty priests. Book bloat wasn’t 2e sorts of bad as long as you stuck to WotC stuff, but it got bad over the 8 years of its existance.
On the ugly side, the math ultimately kills the whole deal for me. It’s moderately bad as a player, but speaking as somebody who spent 8 years DMing it…never again. I just can’t deal with spending an hour per NPC anymore. Just can’t do it.
D&D 4th Edition:
I’ll skip the in depth review, because if you’re reading this, you either don’t care that much, or you’re one of my gaming group in which case you’re already playing, so. However:
Lots of plus sides. Speaking as a player, the way they structured powers is pretty great for the most part. I’d like more of them, but they’re mostly pretty great. They’re fun, they make me think, and they promote teamwork, and that makes me very happy. It’s pretty hard to find a place in character creation where I’m annoyed so far, although there are a couple things we’ll get to.
As a DM, this may be the best edition to DM ever. Very clear guidelines for XP, rewards, and providing challenges, the challenges mostly (hi level 3 skeleton!) are about as challenging as they say they are, and it’s pretty much back to the days of slapping down some monsters and pushing play. If I need bigger or smaller monsters, it’s really easy to make them, unlike in 3e where you got the option but ease of use was a huge lie. Minions are fantastic, and it’s actually possible to run a reasonable mass combat – we’ve had multiple 10+ combatant fights now, and they’re a breeze. There are a lot of people out there whining about 4e combats must take longer now because of all the 1 round bonuses, and I kind of wonder what crack these people are on, because as long as you’re moderately prepared, it goes very fast, albeit we’re playing online for the computer-assisted win.
That said, there are plenty of aspects I am rather more ambiguous about. I miss 3e multiclassing, and am not really sure I love the feat method of doing things. Now that each class has like 80 powers, making new ones is that much harder. The economy is completely bogus, and magic items aren’t so much gutted as drawn, quartered, and hung. I remain moderately ambiguous about the new skill system, although I admit that I love how it speeds up creation and play. I continue to find the healing surge mechanic a little whack, as well as other things like identification.
That said, there’s nothing really deal-breaking here, though I may come across things as I continue to play, and for now, I’m enjoying running a game where excessive stat creation isn’t repeatedly getting in the way of story and dungeon design.
Off the Cuff 4e Fixes:
Since I’m moderately sure most of my issues are easy enough to house rule:
- Multiclassing: I don’t think there’s a really good way of getting 3e style multis that isn’t totally game-breaking. It’s concievable that you could skip the power swap feats entirely (or leave them as an adjunct), and simply rule that you can take levels after 1st as a second class. You’d gain all the benefits of the second class, except you would gain hp as a 2nd level character in that class, etc. Obviously you wouldn’t gain a paragon path. On the downside, you’d be roughly half as powerful as any given non-multiclass. How much of an issue that is, I am unsure. You’d need to run some builds to test it.
Another way to do it might be to drop the prereqs for the power swap feats to 2/4/6, and then at 11th you can freely pick powers between your two classes. I’d also be tempted at 11th to allow the per day usage of things like Hunter’s Quarry, etc to expire, but maybe not. Alternately, create feats to allow more usages. These things seem fairly reasonable to me.
- Kits: It occurs to me that kits would be pretty easy to house rule, and you could throw down specialty priests pretty easy by swapping in powers from another class. The PHB feat idea is one way, but…
- Various specialist ideas: People are talking about doing all cold mages (or whatever) by simply changing the power types on various powers, so that acid arrow (for example) becomes a cold spell but has all the same effects. This strikes me as being a pretty great flavor idea.
- Skills: Got me. There’s not really a good way to factor in Int bonus without being broken that I can think of, given the small number of skills.
- Economy: Similarly, got me. Start by ignoring the dumbass “PCs only sell for 1/5 book price” idiocy, ditch astral diamonds, but the inflation is still strange. Suspect that this can be solved with vigorous handwaving, as my players don’t actually give much of a shit.
- Magic Items: Surprisingly easy to house rule in new ones, which is good. I suspect that the healing surge + potion mechanic could be applied to a lot more things than it currently is, and that in newer books it may well be. I further wonder if dropping all the daily item powers down to encounter powers wouldn’t get us closer to the magic game we’re used to without being 3e chromatic weapon overpowering. As it stands, +1d6 fire and ongoing 5 is what feels like a really great encounter power, but a little light for a daily. I may be wrong about this, but suspect it wouldn’t be dramatically overpowered.
- Identification: Easy. Keep it all short rest (or maybe extended rest) based, but require some level of Arcana check. DC 15 or 20 + (2 * item level) or some such. Add in a low level (call it 5th) Identify ritual. Costs 100 gp to cast, automagically identifies up to your level in magic items. Woosh. Done. This is pretty much the mechanic that exists in the BG and NWN games, which is one that I like a great deal.
Other than that I think it more or less works out.
So it turns out that it’s been quite some time since the last time I did a history post on here, let alone an Iraq post, and for a guy with a history degree that spends a good chunk of his day following foreign affairs, that’s probably a bit odd.
Let us turn our leporidic gaze to that issue, then, and use as the vehicle for the discussion a book by a man named Charles Duelfer, who you may know from the Duelfer Report on Iraqi WMD. Turns out he has a recent book on the subject by the name of Hide and Seek: The Search For Truth In Iraq. Just to get this out of the way, it’s an amazing book, and if you have any interest in the subject at all, you should go get it and read it right now. It is, more or less, a comprehensive view of US relations with Iraq from 1990 onwards, viewed primarily through the lens of WMD proliferation – Duelfer was the second guy at UNSCOM in the 1990s, and went on to head the Iraq Study Group post-invasion. He’s been involved with pretty much all that went on, and knows what he’s talking about. It’s well written and engaging to boot.
I have a few points I’d like to make in reaction. I don’t think these will come as a surprise to anybody, since I appear to be the one person who’s views on Iraq haven’t substantially changed in the last decade, but I want to go on record anyway.
Firstly, I think Duelfer gives a pretty good account of what US official and popular opinion was during the 1990s and up until the invasion, and to sum that up briefly, it was that Iraq had a very long history with WMD dating back pretty much to the inception of Saddam’s regime, and that Iraqi intransigence on the issue was evidence that he was hiding all manner of things.
Ultimately, of course, Iraq turned out to have more or less destroyed the offending materials, barring a few missiles (enough by itself to provoke), but as Duelfer points out, Saddam’s intention always was to eventually reconstitute his WMD programs as soon as he could get the UN/US off his back. Not that we knew this at the time, but it’s fairly logical in hindsight. It does raise a couple of very good points on Duelfer’s part, namely:
1. US intelligence gathering in Iraq was pretty poor pre-war, and in any event the people tasked to it didn’t really understand what they were getting into in most cases;
2. Both the US and Iraq had a very bad habit of thinking past each other – the US misjudging almost every move Saddam made, Saddam not understanding why the US wouldn’t play diplomatic ball with him. The book is worth reading for this discussion alone.
Going along with the popular opinion thing, and this is all my point and not Duelfer’s, a lot of people tend to forget this nowdays, but we spent a lot of time actively bombing Iraq and pressing for regime change in the 1990s, to generally popular acclaim from just about everybody. It was, furthermore, generally understood that Saddam was a really bad dude worthy of getting booted – this also being the age of Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
Too, to some extent the US eventually wrote itself into a corner with respect to Iraq – we did sanctions (which were messing up Iraqis more than they were messing up Saddam and in any case were a huge hotbed of corruption), we did bombing, and eventually we started coming to a choice – either go in and deal with the WMD that were supposedly there and boot Saddam, or drop the whole regime change and non-proliferation things and walk. Neither one is a good choice, but the latter choice was potentially a whole lot worse, so we got what we got.
And to be clear, that’s more or less why I thought invading Iraq was a good idea, albeit in a slightly less refined form in 2003. I guess I get to be wrong about the WMD thing, but given Saddam’s general villainy and intent to procure WMD, I’m not really broken up about it.
That having been said, the other side of that coin is our actual conduct during the invasion and occupation. It’s hard to fault the conduct of the invasion, but (and this has been hashed out a lot) the occupation is another story.
Duelfer’s point is that not only did Garner and Bremer not do anything right, they also weren’t particularly the best people for the job (and I think Bremer may even have made the same point in his own book), although I’m unsure who Duelfer thought could do better. Nobody that existed, perhaps. In particular, Duelfer was of the opinion that merely cutting the head off the Baathist bureaucracy was enough, that the remaining nominally Baathist Iraqis could handle things from there, and indeed that’s what they thought would happen, and they were extremely miffed when that turned out to not be the case.
To be sure, the military doesn’t come off particularly well either – not enough troops on the ground, not allocated to all sorts of things vitally critical to nation building and winning hearts and minds. You can blame the political leadership for that, and believe me we all do, but there’s lots of blame to spread around, here.
Speaking as an armchair military historian here, this is something that baffled me at the time, continues to baffle me, and clearly baffled (and deeply saddened) Duelfer as well. I’d have thought these things were mostly obvious, namely that if you’re going to pull of an invasion, it stands to figure that there will be an occupation. You can pretty much figure that you’re not going to be universally loved, so that bit will be difficult, but you’ve also got a dictatorial state that’s been wrecked over the past 15 years, and is going to need a lot of resources to get it back on its feet. Furthermore, it’s going to take a lot of guys and money to do it right. It remains unclear to me why the senior military leadership of the time, most of whom came up through Vietnam and should be expected to understand this better than me, didn’t do more. It’s somewhat more clear why the political leadership didn’t listen at all to them, but we’ve had that discussion many a time.
In any event, the book is Charles Duelfer’s Hide and Seek: The Search For Truth In Iraq. Get it, read it. Eventually it will become a classic. Five of five aliens.