Category Archives: Life

Election, Facebook, RPG Get, and internets

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There was an election on Tuesday. It was my first time using a no-paper-trail electronic voting machine, and that made me more nervous that it should have. I then spent the entire day worrying about the results. In the end, it turns out my worry was for nothing, but it was still not a great experience.

To be clear: I am not a Democrat, and don’t (and didn’t) vote along party lines. That said, I think Romney is a terrible candidate (since his campaign decided they would just ignore facts and say whatever they wanted), the Republicans as a whole are an unreasonable party taken over by the far right (like in the general party denial of science, desire to increase military spending while cutting everything else, and goals of cutting taxes for the ultra-rich). It wouldn’t have been the end of the world had Romney won, but I think we would have been set back many years and would come out the other end worse off for it.

I don’t know. I think this article does a reasonable job of summarizing my views on Republicans. I often feel like, had I been born 20 years earlier, I would be a Republican. As it stands now, it seems I identify more with the Green party (90% agreement with Jill Stein) and Libertarian party (80-ish% agreement with Gary Johnson).

I think the lack of an ability to contact friends is getting to me enough that I’m going to reactivate Facebook (probably tomorrow). That said, I still plan to keep it blocked like it is now to prevent it from doing horrible tracking across the web on me, and I don’t plan to actually use it since I still disagree with the short blurb style of modern social media. I just think it would be useful to make sure I always have a means of contacting friends. Stupid Facebook.

Progress continues (slowly) on RPG Get. I have a text-only test deck created, so I should soon be able to see if the mechanics work at all. If so, I can tweak and refine them. I’ve also been feeling the Photoshop itch lately, so I might start designing card templates. We shall see.

I went through today and cleaned up my legacy online presence, which mostly means I went through and deleted old pages from Angelfire. I remembered I had http://www.angelfire.com/dc/alan, but it surprised me when the password reset indicated my email address was also associated with http://www.angelfire.com/pro/gildershadow. It’s kind of interesting to look at the old version of the Shadow and Gilder Shrine. It kind of makes me miss video games. At some point, I should bring my Gamecube (or Dreamcast) back and play more Skies of Arcadia.

Speaking of Angelfire, it’s become rather terrible, but I guess that’s the norm for free hosting sites these days. Its interface is super cartoony, its password reset functionality doesn’t even really work (it errored out on me every time, but apparently the password had been properly reset?), its control panel is super sketchy (throwing errors pretty regularly for things like deleting files), and you can’t change any account information (more errors). It makes me glad I have my own domain now.

I’m bored, so have some quick and horrible Photoshops.

Life in general goes.

Königs-Pittsburgh walk success (mostly)

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The Königsberg bridge problem is an (unsolvable) problem where you want to cross each bridge in Königsberg exactly once and end up on the landmass you started from.

The Königs-Pittsburgh walk, similarly, is a 39-mile walk that crosses each pedestrian-accessible trans-river bridge with at least one endpoint in Pittsburgh exactly once and ends at its starting point. (Thanks to the exploded nature of the 31st Street bridge, this is possible and you can end on the same node you started from.)
Today we attempted this walk with mostly success. (With thanks to Greg for planning the route, organizing the trip, and jotting down the timing information that I have used below.)

Keith, Dan, Ben, Greg, and I started the walk this morning around 5:30 in Friendship, then first crossed the Highland Park bridge around 6:30.

Next up were the 62nd street bridge at 7:23,

the 40th street bridge at 8:14,

and the 16th street bridge at 9:25 putting us in the Strip District where we met up with Owen and had a small ~30 minute stop for snacks (bread, pastries, hot dogs, chow mein).

Next we crossed (in quick succession) the 9th street bridge (where we also picked up a cbuckey) at 10:27,

the 7th street bridge at 10:31 (followed by a quick stop for camera batteries, as Greg’s point-and-shoot was sad),

and the 6th street bridge at 10:54,

putting us in the North Side where we had a long detour up to the McKees Rock bridge, crossing it at 12:22. We had an hour-long detour afterward for lunch (at a Subway). After lunch, it unfortunately started raining, and didn’t let up for the rest of the trip.

Crossed back over the West End bridge at 3:07

followed by the Fort Duquesne bridge at 3:39, putting us at the Point.

At this point, we lost an Owen and cbuckey, took a 20-minute break, and then crossed the Ft. Pitt bridge at 4:10 to the South Side.

Next were the Smithfield Street bridge at 4:34,

the Liberty bridge at 4:50,

and the 10th street bridge at 5:26, after which we lost a Keith.

We crossed the Birmingham bridge into South Side around 6, where we stopped for a 70-minute dinner at OTB Bicycle Cafe.

Next up was the Hot Metal bridge, leaving South Side around 7:42.

About 15 minutes before the Glenwood bridge, we lost a Dan. We crossed that bridge around 8:48, followed by a 15-minute break in West Homestead.

We crossed our final bridge, the Homestead Grays bridge, at 9:54, finishing around 10:05.

Despite my feet still being fine, and over Greg’s desire to “properly” complete the hike, we decided to stop it there (due to the cold and rain and time) and caught a 64 bus home, for a total trip of just over 35 miles. (Hence the “mostly” success of the trip.)

Overall though, the trip went very well. Learning from the Ohio walk earlier this summer, I bought some cloth tape and taped my toes (for padding), then taped them together (so they wouldn’t rub into each other and blister). This worked far better than anticipated, resulting in my feet feeling completely fine up until around the 10th Street bridge, and even then it was more of a “my feet are getting tired” feeling than a “my feet and legs hurt” feeling. (I suspect blisters make me start walking strangely, which makes my feet and legs hurt because they’re not used to it… so normal walking throughout means my legs and feet don’t really hurt.)
After sitting down over dinner, I had fully recovered and they felt perfectly fine through the end of the walk. Even now, I don’t feel any real pain in my feet or legs… they definitely feel overused, but they’re not complaining like they usually do after a walk of more than 20 miles.

Blister-wise I came out great also. I ended up with only one blister (in the weirdest place; on the very tip of my toe, where I guess I hadn’t covered it with tape and so the sock rubbed against it).

More photos can be found at my photos page.

So mission success. Congratulations to everyone that walked, and particular congratulations to Dan for making it more than 32 miles (including his 2-mile walk from home to the starting point) on his first long-walk experience.

In other, non-bridge related things, I went PIUing with Max and Yubin again this past Wednesday, and Thursday was the usual board games night. Yesterday, all four of the other house inhabitants had a pumpkin-carving party on the porch, and it was kind of awesome. It’s been a good week. :) Photos of games and the pumpkins will be on photos tomorrow, since it is now late and I would like to sleep.

Edit: Board game photos are here and pumpkin carving photos are here.

Wine, Tartan, Celïdiluh, and fun

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life has gotten an update bringing it up to the beginning of this month. I had quite an eventful last month, it seems. But it’s also been an eventful last week.
(Also, because I was sick of referring to the sections as “stats” and “life proper”, they are now called “photo stats” and “photo journal”, which hopefully will be easier to refer to. So yeah… the photo journal has been updated.)

Besides the usual Thursday board games, we went to Yubin’s this week for a wine tasting (with 5 different cheeses and 4 different kinds of crackers), and it was pretty awesome. Yubin really knows her wines.




This weekend was also Cèilidh Weekend (AKA Homecoming) and so there was the usual chili cookoff. I wasn’t able to enjoy it as fully this year (had to work starting at noon, so I just grabbed a bowl of chili and a burger and went upstairs to work), but I got my mug, so I continue my streak of having every year’s mug.

Yesterday was also the opening of Vincent’s exhibit of photographs at the Trinity Gallery. It was kind of awesome to see… yay gallery shows by people we know!
(Photo kind of related… it’s bblum biking home on the way to the opening.)

Today was Tartan production. I had done a crossword for the paper last week, but it was a really crappy one. This week, Greg helped me and (after one failed attempt and a couple times of giving up) we ended up with a reasonable crossword that is reasonably dense and rotationally symmetric. Hopefully we’ll do even better next week with finding more common words.

Earlier in the week was a 66th monthiversary and an associated dinner at Point Brugge which has really tasty mussels (and reasonably good, but very oily, fries).

Life continues to be good. :)

I really should be pursuing more personal side projects, but I’m kind of a fan of this whole “fill my life with friends and events with friends”, so I suppose it’s not all bad.

Life, hike, (hopefully lack of a) rant, and foo

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It’s the end of another four month period, so life (both stats and life) has been updated. Yay more life. There are also some photos up at photos.

Things have been funness lately. Today we took a bus and the T down to the Montour trail for a 10-mile hike. The original goal was to hike it for 10 miles, to Clairton, then continue upward to McKeesport (another 5 miles) to catch the 61C home. However, we didn’t get to Clairton until after 5:30 and I was feeling really unhappy by that point (due to the heat, humidity, and dehydration from my stupidity of not bringing drinking water), so we caught the Y46 bus to downtown, ate at the Golden Palace Buffet that wasn’t a buffet due to the dinner and weekendness, and came home to collapse.

I have also now surpassed 300,000 tagged photos. Photoshop album reports 300,951 photos tagged. This is lower than the actual number taken, since I now go through photos and delete many before saving the rest (for example, today’s trip was reduced from the 261 taken to 181 to keep). But it’s still a fun statistic. The 300,000th tagged photo was of New House (Stever?) getting ready for House Wars.
In another fun milestone, my D90 has broken 100,000 tagged photos (100,874 right now). It should overtake my D50 (105,067 tagged photos before it died, after being repaired once) at some point in the next few months.
I’ve also been noticing how more (most, even?) of my photos are now taken portrait style, rather than landscape style. I think this was prompted by the template redesign of People Wars (where card photos are portrait style now), but it’s spilled over into my general photography. Not a bad thing, just something that amuses me. (Even my portraits used to be landscape.)
Speaking of which, I released the next People Wars expansion a couple days ago, and also added a way to list cards by expansion (since the old card database was only useful for listing by type). I need a good “E” name for the next expansion. Any ideas?

I got a raise at work. Apparently I’m doing good work. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it and it feels like I don’t get nearly as much done as I should, or as other people do. But apparently that isn’t true. I’m trying to work better (9-5) hours, given my habit of just working from when I wake up until the evening. So far it’s kind of working out?

KoL continues. The new challenge path (Zombie Slayer AKA become a zombie and eat brains) has managed to get me addicted to the game again. Currently nearing the end of my second run (with good luck, I can be done tomorrow. But this is rather unlikely.) and it’s enjoyable in the same way Boris was enjoyable… less fiddlyness, more of a sense of success after each run, and more being able to push my normal character abilities. The new IotM looks amazing too. Perhaps it is time to break into the horde of Crimbo meat I have to get one.

Not much else is happening. Life continues. Life is good.

New music lately includes Alexandra Burke (sadly not available in MP3 format in the US), Josh Gracin, and Alanis Morissette (which was free after my $3 album credit and $5 coinstar credit). I have managed to keep myself from spending much more money on Kickstarter lately. This is a good thing.

Greg has convinced me to get a bike. Being the sort of “meh whatever” person I am, I will probably pick one up at Costco the next time we’re there for food. We shall see.

I kind of want to write a rant about how “social justice” and content warnings have been turned into these horrible (offensive, in a way?) concepts for me because of things that keep appearing in my (few remaining) social media feeds. But I will refrain from that for now because it will not do anything productive and probably just get me flamed by everyone.
I understand and sympathize… really, I do. I just feel like people take things way too far sometimes and overreact, which in turn makes the entire thing something I am more inclined to disagree with. And, as a concept taken too far, it really clashes with my “personal responsibility” (or lack thereof in current society) view of the world.

Perhaps this has much to do with what I consider my general movement towards being more moderate and generally trying to be more understanding of differing views. …something along the lines of, “People that disagree with you are not wrong and are not unreasonable. They just disagree with you.” Which I suppose is also dangerous because it’s an absolute (yes, sometimes people are actually just “wrong,” like if they’re arguing that the Earth is flat), but it’s closer to what I feel than the opposite.
That part is what I alluded to at the end of my last post, but I still haven’t really figured out a way to put my thoughts into coherent words, so they shall continue being unwritten.

I’ll leave you on a more positive note with photos from today’s hike because I like photos and I like hikes and I like posting. Yay hike.






Meme: Cooking and music

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There have been nice bits of music lately.
First off there’s Little White Flag and the related kickstarter for a full album. It’s a good song. You should help fund their album if you like the song.
Second, Kelly apparently wrote a new anthem for the Dallas Cowboys called “Get Up”, which you can download for free here. It’s very happy and upbeat and dance-y. I am a fan (even if I’m not a fan of the Cowboys).
Third, Incorporated Elements did an awesome remix of “The Day We Fell Apart” from Kelly’s last album, which is also up for download here.
Fourth, I downloaded Bangarang back when the EP was on sale. Dubstep is awesome. Too bad good dubstep is so hard to come by.
Fifth, I also downloaded Amaryllis back when it was on sale. A few of the tracks (Unity, Miracle, Through The Ghost) are standouts and they’ve been on my standard playlist since then.
Also grabbed a few random tracks like God Gave Me You and Something To Do With My Hands using free MP3 credit. My musical tastes are rather eclectic.

Anyway, I’m making food for 5 tonight (kind of an impromptu dinner party), so it seems like an appropriate time to cover the last of Jess’ meme topics for me.

Cooking is a weird thing for me. I generally like food, and looking at food, and contemplating food. One of my favorite websites is airline meals, where people post photos of their plane food.

That said, I don’t really have a good appreciation for “fancy” food. Maybe my palate isn’t refined enough or something, but on the occasions I get to go to upscale places, I feel like I don’t appreciate the food as much as I should given how much it costs… really, I would rather go to cheaper places and get larger portions.

So, expectedly, my cooking is rather boring, standard stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff I make in the food category of this journal. It all tends to involve a meat and a veggie or starch. I do cook Thai food sometimes, but not as much as I should given the expensiveness of “exotic” ingredients ($4/lb for bok choy? really?) at local grocery stores and distance of cheaper ethnic stores. Also, Greg doesn’t like tofu or non-standard sea creatures, which also limits the kind of things I can easily do.

The process itself I usually find relaxing and rewarding, since it’s nice to be able to do something after a day of coding that doesn’t involve a keyboard or debugging. Cooking pretty much always works out the way you want it to, and you can experiment as much as you want and (usually) still get something tasty out the other end.
Still, when I’m feeling particularly stressed about work, I tend to find the extra “chore” of cooking to be too much and will default to heating frozen things or making sandwiches. Which is odd given how much I enjoy it normally. But meh.

So yay food.
Tonight’s menu is salad (a mix of bagged salads with some fresh tomato and mozzarella; yes I’m lazy), lemon-pepper baked tilapia, green beans, rice (made with mixed veggies and spices in my usual style), and watermelon (since we have two, since they were on sale this week at geagle). Om nom nom nom.

I’ve had a lot of other random introspective thoughts bouncing around my head the past few days, but I don’t know how to put them into words, so they will remain unwritten for now.