March 2008 Archives

This past week, the gov't released into the wild the new $5 bills. Among the various things they claim is that the newest bill makes it harder to counterfeit, blah blah blah.

I contend that the new bill makes it easier to counterfeit currency. Why?

They keep changing the bills so goddamned often, it's impossible to keep up. Someone could come up to me a year from now and have a totally new design they worked up in Photoshop, and say "Well, that's the new design, I just got it from the bank this morning, crazy huh?" and y'know what -- it'd be believable.

Paper currency hadn't changed that much - visually - for a really long time. Now it seems like it gets a completely new design every couple years, reducing civilian confidence in "what a $5 bill is supposed to look like".

Your gov't at work.....

This will be meaningless to a good chunk of you. Just ignore me, if that's the case.

Don't ever buy 0U PDUs. If you're thinking about it, don't. If you're still thinking about it now, slit your own throat before you can verbally agree to the purchase. If you've already verbally agreed, chop off your hand so you can't sign. If you've already signed, then the phrase "down not across" should become your new mantra.

Seriously, there isn't a single fscking vendor out there that does them right. And heaven forbid you're stuck with a cabinet configuration that's not the Official Sanctioned and Blessed Configuration Manufactured By The PDU Manufacturer, because then you'll be lucky if you can get the PDU anywhere near the right location, even if you use arc-welders, chewing gum, and duct-tape.

Don't do it. Self-performed Lasik surgery would be a more productive use of your time, and far less painful.

If I was to try and figure out the greatest source of ... call it "enjoyable gaming time" or "lost productivity hours", whichever you please .... it would all fall on the shoulders of E. Gary Gygax, the "founding father" as it were of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary's creation would inspire many a teenage kid (and even a middle-aged computer geek) to spend many an evening huddled around a card table with strange-shaped dice, speaking in stupid accents, scribbling cryptic notes on scraps of paper and, for a few hours at a time, pretending to be somebody completely different.

Gary's health had been bad the past few years, and I felt really lucky when George and I met him last summer at GenCon - the gaming convention he had founded 40 years prior. He was as personable as any man could possibly be, warm and friendly, and very understanding as both George and I stood there with copies of all our first-edition books trying to get him to autograph them all (which, to his credit, he very patiently did).

Rest in peace, Gary, in whichever plane of the multiverse you'll call home from now on....