| better were the days when masterin' of seas came not from bargains struck with eldritch creatures |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|01:22 am] |
| [ | Hearing... |
| | The Smiths -- There is a Light That Never Goes Out | ] |
Twice lately I have been mistaken for an attorney. Need to think on that for a while.
Early November was Executive Leadership at Babson: engaging in a round of 360-evaluations, filming oneself in a series of stressful problem-solving team exercises, practicing various conversational strategems. The overwhelming majority of [my] feedback suggested patience, tolerance, forging interpersonal connections so as to inspire loyalty. A favorite [if slightly-embarrassing] critique reads "Sven is the Death Star. His gaze is the laser that destroys planets." A powerful experience; I need to come to terms with my own progressive self-isolation in the workplace, my recent focus on individual contribution nearly to the point of peer-avoidance, a growing sense of unrecognized accomplishment and credit-hoarding paranoia. The well is sufficiently deep at this point such that a change of venue may be necessary.
-- A.I. Kubrick's dystopian Pinnochio. Tugs at parenthood's heartstrings.
-- Milk. His promiscuity detracts somewhat from the film's political focus.
-- Queen Margot. Dumas' Catholic-Protestant strife. An unhappy ending.
-- Red. Maybe weakest of Kieslowski's trilogy? Bizarre char-parallelism.
Have been tinkering with my chop-shop AMD X4 (still running with Vista for now), chiseling at a couple of written assignments detailing innovation and negotiation, and dusting off the casino fraud-detection research project. I moved my office back to the west [noisy] side of the building. I am dabbling in meta-tactics involving "disorienting questions" [wherein the subject is impelled to blink, pause, and question a pre-conceived belief or habit] and "ownership of comments" [slowly and thoughtfully repeating an inflammatory remark back to its speaker, so as to invite backpedaling or similar concession]. Psychological warfare? More like a way to cut through all the superficial bullsh*t.
A self-effacing admission in closing. You know how the shadows and music play out accompanying pantomime-stories throughout Coppola's Dracula adaptation? Or how Scorsese's Age of Innocence protagonist is always viewing works of art (paintings, opera) which foreshadow the rest of the coming story? I almost never catch any of that stuff. It has to be pointed out to me. |
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| Baby report |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|08:18 pm] |
At six and a half weeks, from a starting weight of 8 pounds 15 ounces, our young man has swollen to a startlingly gargantuan 15 and a half pounds.
That's the average weight of a 5-month old. For a 6-week-old, it's, like, 99th percentile. He dwarfs babies twice his age. He's outgrown almost all of the 0-3 month clothing we have for him.
He's smiling and (occasionally) giggling now. He hasn't quite rolled over, but if he's on kind of a slope he can push himself around and he can get from his back to his side, although he stops there, so maybe that's just as far as he wants to go. He makes eye contact with Nikki, and is starting to make eye contact with me too. (Although he'd usually rather watch the fire in the wood stove. Or the lights on the ceiling. Or, you know, other shiny things.)
He happily slept 5 hours last night. He can get his hands into his mouth most of the times he tries, although he does sometimes demand a grownup finger.
He frightens the mothers of smaller babies. And we're co-sleeping, but lately I'm more worried he'll roll over onto me. |
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| qotd |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|01:25 pm] |
(paraphrased from memory)
"You worked for an oil company, didn't you?"
"Yes. Shell."
"Middle management?"
"I was in marketing. For oil. Which is technically the easiest job on the planet. Does your car have a fuel gauge?"
"Yeah... "
"You know when that goes into the red bit?"
"Yeah... "
"Buy some petrol. Job done!"
- Jimmy Carr on the stresses of the workplace, Top Gear "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" interview with Jeremy Clarkson |
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| that icon usually means one thing... |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|01:07 am] |
If you need to reach me anytime soon, please call my home # or Jim's cell as I'm not checking email because....
It is now Day 3 of really bad migraine.
I understand the appeal of trephining. A lot.
I have a doctor's appointment for way to early with a migraine for Friday a.m. I am expecting to get shot (!) with meds, since nothing is helping.
This is, in fact, not the worst migraine I ever had. Not even the second worse. But in in number of days it is dragging on. (the longest migraine for me? 5 days...but that was before I had meds for it.) Normal now is one to two days max.
Arghghghgh.
Seriously, please call if you need to reach me. I actually took a sick day (which I don't have) and didn't teach on Thursday because I was just too sick. |
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| Diaspoa -- Bellweather |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|02:00 pm] |
Bellweather: T-1 E-1 R0
Bellweather is an ice-covered ball on the fringes of its star's habitable zone. Temperatures run well below freezing and that's before the windchill sets in. The harsh climactic condition, slightly higher gravity and unremarkable resources made it the ideal prison world during a particularly dark time in Confederation history.
The one thing Bellweather does have is an abundance of steam thanks to numerous geothermal vents. Using this ready source of power, the Confederation drilled down through ice and rock and set up sprawling underground prison complexes complete massive hydroponics for food.
Conditions in the prisons were extremely harsh. The traditional problems of prison gangs and conflict with wardens were altered by the need for everyone to work hard to maintain the systems that kept the prisons viable. After one particularly disastrous riot, an entire facility lost power and was quickly turned into a frozen graveyard. This tended to force some degree of cooperation, but when buried grudges came to the fore, they were often more brutal. Over time, corruption set in and the wardens were integrated into the gangs in various ways. Often they ruled a gang as the top dog, but sometimes a crafty gang would get leverage on a warden and use them as a puppet.
Eventually, Confederation politics changed and Bellweather was decommissioned as a prison, but the culture of Bellweather had mutated to the point where everyone saw more benefit staying put. In flagrant violation of prison rules, a number of generations had actually come of age within the walls. People either had some sort of seniority in a pecking order that would be lost if they went back "outside" or they had no useful place in regular society. So Bellweather applied as a colonial protectorate and was largely ignored by the rest of the Confederation.
Then a desperate merchant decided to hire a small gang of Bellweathers to protect his ship. The pirates who tried to board the merchant were cut down to a man. The claustrophobic prison warrens were very similar to life aboard a starship and the Bellweathers knew lots of ways to kill someone in a close-quarters fight where guns and explosives weren't an option. Soon Bellweather's chief export was Shipboard Security Services. The Wardens generally negotiated services and commanded the forces on-board. Despite some early (and swiftly punished) episodes of betrayal, the Bellweather teams were loyal and dedicated to their employer and the Confederation as a whole. The Confederate Navy experimented with incorporating Bellweather forces into their Marines, but these experiments were always small scale and kept fairly quiet to avoid a PR disaster.
When the slipstream connections to the Confederation broke up, there was a period of several months of violent outbreaks as power vacuums were exposed and filled. Things were soon sorted out and life on Bellweather returned to normal (although the lack of work was keenly felt). The re-alignment of the slipstreams has brought new opportunities and new problems.
The Wardens in particular, still hold some loyalty to the Confederation (even in its greatly reduced scope). They continue to favor working with Apex and Concordia. The gangs, on the other hand, are mostly loyal to their gang and the biggest paycheck. Merchants and mercenary groups from Eigen are anxious to get Bellweather gangs on their payroll and they generally have a lot to offer. So far, Bellweather accepts only limited contracts to work for Eigen merchants, but it's a rapidly growing sector of their trade and the pressure to do more lucrative deals with Eigen is steadily increasing.
Aspects:
- Natural Born Killers
- The Gang is Everything
- Our Word is Bond
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| White List Update |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|12:50 pm] |
It's only been 6 months....
The White List
This is a very small update that ended up being mostly deletions. I'll try to get another update next month that includes a number of authors feeds that I've created over the last few months.
If you have any updates you want added to the list, please post at the entry above NOT HERE.
Thanks. |
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| GRRr |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|07:02 pm] |
Securemarket filled in the first 30 seconds
(and I was clicking the link the entire time)
((i hope it's not full of entirely me))
waitlist... will probably swap to something else... maybe\
TIME FOR YOGA!!!! |
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| Diaspoa -- Apex |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|01:14 pm] |
Apex: T3 E2 R-2
The Apex system (along with Bellweather and Concordia) was once a part of the Confederation, a cluster-wide political organization that sprawled across 8 different systems. Apex, with its twin garden worlds and numerous space habitats was mostly devoted to scientific research and development. The theory was that cutting-edge science could be conducted within Apex and if anything went wrong, nothing too terrible would happen. The system's lack of material resources and the Confederation's high level of livable planets meant that Apex was the most expendable of the systems within the cluster.
Unfortunately, innovation can come from anywhere. Apex scientists still aren't entirely sure what happened, but based on the last news dump they received there was some sort of advancement in CyberCom technology. The current theory is that billions of people linked together via CyberCom may have formed some gestalt intelligence that sparked singularity. The outcome of this event was that the slipstream network connecting Apex, Bellweather and Concordia to the rest of the Confederation cluster broke up. The three planets were trapped in their own small cluster for almost a year and then the slipstreams re-aligned and now Apex is part of a new cluster.
Achieving Singularity has been a goal of many people in Apex. Advancing science and technology has been everyone's priority. Getting left behind while the rest of the Confederation moved on has stung them deeply. So they've thrown themselves into cutting edge research. Without a steady stream of resources from mineral-rich systems of the Confederation however, a lot of this work is still mostly theoretical. A great deal of effort is expended in simply preserving the technology they currently have. In this case, that means maintaining their starship superiority.
The Apex fleet, even with only a few dedicated warships, is the mightiest in the system. But it's old and while Apex still possesses the know-how to fix and maintain the ships (or even build new ones), getting the necessary materials to do the job is the problem. Analysts have concluded that Apex could probably wipe out the entirety of the Eigen space fleet, but would itself be destroyed in the process. If Eigen ever captures an Apex ship and manages to reverse engineer it, that would be the end of Apex dominance. The upshot is that Apex captains are very protective of their ships. It also means that Apex most valuable commodity, scientific and engineering information, must be traded away very carefully and for the highest of prices.
Aspects:
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
- Achieve the Singularity
- Guard the Tree of Knowledge
later
Tom |
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