Two things I miss of La Crosse: the drives (as I have talked about a couple times) and the interesting topology of the area (again, experienced while driving). Madison, while great, is pretty boringly flat, and I don’t have a whole lot of reason to do excitingly long drives (especially ones with different, exploratory routes). I kind of want to do some sort of Wisconsin road trip.

Or maybe I should stop feeding my nostalgia with Wikipedia surfing.

… the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure has given us invaluable information … It has shown [that] every new structure which projects into new fields of magnitude involves new problems for the solution of which neither theory nor practical experience furnish an adequate guide. It is then that we must rely largely on judgement and if, as a result, errors or failures occur, we must accept them as a price for human progress.

— Othmar Ammann, leading bridge designer and member of the Federal Works Agency Commission

Sorry, nothing else to post. I just thought that was a very insightful quote, and I’d rather not lose it, or at least enjoy it a bit.

Total aside, I have incorporeal.org still, and I have no idea what to do with it. I need a project…

I was feeling kind of nostalgic today, after the house poking around, and I always enjoyed driving Wisconsin Highway 33 (which has terminus points in La Crosse and Port Washington!). In fact, I think taking that 4 – 5 hour drive from one end to the other was my favorite part of living in La Crosse, to the point that I had often gone out of my way to start my drive at one end, so I could say that I drove the entirety of 33.

Anyway, nostalgia. I “drove” 33 again today by turning on satellite view on Google Maps, zooming in as close as I could for each location, and scrolling from La Crosse to Port Washington. Fun times.

Software deploy Tuesday went horribly. That’s not why I’m writing, though.

American video game commercials suck.

…and I think they’re trying to sell me Sex and/or Cola.

We actually played D&D on Monday! Holy crap, and things. D&D 4e is looming, and I’m more excited than I thought I’d be. I think part of it is just the motivation to buy new books. But, maybe the new edition will be awesome. At the very least, I’m hoping that the flushing away of 3.5e material will, for at least a short period of time, make the system feel more pure and pristine.

I don’t expect WotC to show restraint, however, and expect to be inundated with broken prestige classes and feats within a year’s time. Don’t know how I feel about the messing around with Forgotten Realms, either. Maybe it’ll work out, but part of me feels that they could and should have just left it the way it was. Meh.

Wow, Rock Monster on Scifi was a new level of bad. Not terrible, but it seemingly had no sense of how clichéd the entire presentation was. American boy meets foreign girl, foreign girl falls in love with vaguely interesting American tourist, evil wizard attacks town with rock monster, evil wizard kidnaps girl, American boy kills rock monster and evil wizard, sequel hinted at. We’ve all seen it before.

Not being religious, and not really doing anything else tomorrow, I’ve declared it “talk like foo day” where foo is a pirate (again), or Poshul, or whatever you’d like. Me, I’m going with the Swedish chef. Börk! Börk! Börk!

We’ll see how long it lasts, but I did make a little Irssi alias for it.

/alias chef exec - -o echo "$*" | chef

Jump Ultimate Stars came today, and I started struggling through the menus, translating the Japanese at a snail’s pace, and probably not very accurately, either. I did, however, figure out enough to determine that I was erasing the data (it’s a used game) and yes, I really meant it. So that’s kind of exciting.

消す (kesu) - to erase

RiffTrax are, as expected, amazingly funny. A bunch of us watched their riffs of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and Independence Day yesterday, and they were a hoot. A+.

New Super Mario Bros. is pretty fun (welcome to 2006!!!!!!!!!1111). Not the greatest game in the world, but a good platformer. Super Mario Galaxy is supposedly insanely great; I played a bit and enjoyed it, but these new-fangled two independent movement schemes confuse me greatly.

I hadn’t tried the Opera browser in many years, but I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the 9.5 betas. Still a bit rough around the edges (it is a beta), but with the ability to synchronize bookmarks across Opera installations, I might make a full switch.

Good ol’ Frankenroc from ages ago left some comments on here months ago and I never replied to them. I’m not shunning you, sir, I’m just really lazy. Good to hear from you again and all of that.

Bonesaw is still really cute.

Two young girls came by the house yesterday. At first we mistook the doorbell for aspiring trick-or-treaters, but instead they came bearing the most awesome of surprises: a kitten.

We took it in, as it was in need of a home, so the story goes. It — “Bonesaw", if the past 24 hours are any indication as to its True Name — is a rambunctious little bugger, as you can see here interested in playing with Styrofoam peanuts. It goes to the vet tomorrow for all that good vet stuff.

Bonesaw took some coaxing out from under my bed yesterday, but today it is already seeming pretty acclimated to the house, running around and recognizing people and calls. He (we’re pretty sure on “he") likes curling up with Dasha when it’s time for sleeping, and coming up to Peter or I to play with Styrofoam or things dangling from our desks.

What a random event this has been. Also, TDS installed fixed wireless today, and so far I’m very pleased.

I got my Logitech Z-5500 speakers today, and they kick some serious ass. They don’t have the same digital in as the digital out on my Audigy 2 (Z-5500’s coax vs. Audigy 2’s 3.5mm stereo jack), but going over the direct six channel analog seems just as clear to my only pseudotrained ears, so I don’t think that will be a big hang up. In any event, the Audigy 2 mixer has separate volume controls for the three outputs, and they work, so I think that’s sufficient enough? I’m too busy enjoying the speakers at the moment to really care too much.

Also on the subject of audio, I logged into eMusic today and noticed that they have audiobooks for sale, including an unabridged Moby Dick clocking in at just a hair over 24 hours. Insane. And the audiobook thing is pretty cool too, although I haven’t browsed too much of the catalog yet.