Dragging my food-poisoned butt to the car this morning, I breathed in the refreshingly cold air.  When it's  12° with no wind to speak of and the sun shining, it's actually rather pleasant assuming you're dressed correctly.  Got in the DuckMobile and she started right up, no problems!  I let her warm up for a couple of minutes as I caught my breath (I'm still kinda shaky after the events of yesterday), then headed off to work.

As I pulled into the main lot at Duck U, the DuckMobile suddenly started to jerk and, well, chug, particularly at low RPMs.  Rubbawhut?  I pulled into a spot, shut her down, went into the Duck U Bookstore and immediately called Ricotta's Automotive, official mechanic of The Pond. 

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Tuesday night I had soup and sandwich for dinner.  Around midnight, I started getting stomach cramps... and then all hell broke loose.  For the next 15 hours, my life consisted of the bathroom and my bedroom, trying to get some sleep.

After she got out of the library, The Librarian brought over more bottled water, some gatorade and most importantly, pepto-bismol.  By 7pm I was feeling better.  By 8pm I was able to get up the energy to turn on the computer and chat with Brickmuppet, who'd gone through the same thing recently.

I finally managed to fall asleep at 10pm.  I'm still weak and shaky, but things are pretty much done, I think.

I don't recommend the experience.

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-Kill Me Baby, Ep02

Pilots everywhere are frantically trying to change course right now.

I'll be blunt: Kill Me Baby is not funny.  At all.  I watched 10 minutes of the first episode and was surprised to find that it still had 12 minutes left to go... I thought for sure I'd gone through a half-hour already.  That is NOT a good sign.  Also not a good sign: Wonderduck skipping ahead during a show.  I just don't do that, particularly during the first episode of a show I was looking forward to.  It's not bad or anything, it's just not funny.

By the halfway point of Ep02, I was actually saying "Kill Me Baby" to my duck collection, hoping one of them would take me up on the offer.  No such luck.  When the above scene came on, I actually envied the one being choked out.  Then I closed zoomplayer and went off and played some Skyrim.

What I'm saying is that Kill Me Baby is not worth anybody's time.  Just writing this little post took more time than KMB was worth.  If I was in a better mood, maybe I'd turn it into the next Rio Rainbow Gate!, but it'd fail for lack of anything interesting.

Don't watch it.  Don't download it.  Don't even read this post... oh wait.

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...Albert Einstein was born in 1879, Adrian Sutil still has not found a drive, and here's the Wikipedia entry for "visual novels" (per our discussion of Katawa Shoujo).  Not re: our lunchtime conversation, over at FARK, someone photoshopped a picture of Rumpole!

Pretty darn cool, eh?  Not that he was ever that energetic, but it's a neat bit of art.

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I feel much the same way right now.  Tuesday is the start of Spring Rush, yet we're already stupid-busy at the Duck U Bookstore.  Part of that can be marked down to being a smidge shorthanded, but it really does seem like we've gotten more customers through our doors of late.  But there's a deeper, darker thing going on as well.  My knees are killing me.  Last Wednesday both of them hurt badly enough to make me weep when I got home.  Unfortunately, there's no position that I've found that makes them not hurt, just some that hurt less.  That'll make Rush Week particularly spicy! 

As you can guess from the picture above, I'm still playing Katawa Shoujo.  I've finished two paths, just stumbled into a third, and have the instructions on how to get into a fourth sitting here next to me.  Based on the two routes I've completed, I'll temper my excitement for the game a bit.  It's no longer "brilliant", just merely very very good indeed.  However, considering that it's an independently produced game made by a collection of amateurs working for free and released for the price of nothing, it's really quite astounding.

On a different note, I've now gone well over a month without a cigarette.  I think I'm handling it fairly well... I only occasionally want to massacre entire villages with my bare hands and drink the blood of my victims.

My ALCO PA post seems to have nudged my "I trains" button again.  Here's the image I'm currently using as my computer's wallpaper:

Inside a Chicago & Northwestern roundhouse, circa 1942.

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-Bodacious Space Pirates, Ep01

I'm... not sure about this show.  On the one hand, everything seems to be perfect.  The characters are believable, or at least they're as believable as a show like this ever gets, the artwork is quite appealing, the animation is acceptable, there seems to be plenty of room for both humor and drama, and there's a bodacious space pirate rubber duckie.  Oh, and "Bodacious Space Pirates" would be a great name for a band.  Like I said, perfect.

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I really didn't think it was possible, but I've actually not played Skyrim for the past four days.  I've been busy cheating on it playing a different game.  It doesn't look anywhere near as good as the latest entry in The Elder Scrolls series.  It doesn't get the adrenaline pumping nearly as much as a dragon swooping down on you.  There's no fireballs flying around the screen, no flashing swords, no murky dungeons or scary monsters.  But still and all, I have had my entire gaming time consumed utterly and completely by this markedly low-rent game... perhaps because I've been waiting for nearly three years for it to come out.  And what, you may ask, is this true paragon of gaming virtue?

It's been released... and it's brilliant.  I reviewed the demo here, and none of Act I has changed... except that they've regraphicalized Emi, for the better might I add.

A review of the full game will be forthcoming... as soon as I get another path or two under my belt.  I've only done one so far, and while initial signs are positive ("...and it's brilliant."), I've seen some thought that the route I've played was the best of the bunch.  We'll see.  In the meantime, if you're interested the full game can be located for free torrent-based download right here.  No matter what, it's already a remarkable achievement, one that was five years in the making: a complete and total ren'ai game, in English, that's at least as good as any Japanese ones I've played.

UPDATE: Brickmuppet and I get all recursive and stuff.

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I'm a railfan.  Not a particularly well-educated one, I'll admit, but I have a huge soft spot (my noggin, most like) for trains.  Like many uneducated but well-meaning rail buffs, I miss the steam era though it was already over before I came around.  I also think that diesel locomotives all look the same and are boring as heck because of it.  Yeah, like nobody has ever said that before, right?  Even the cutesy nicknames given some of the diesel trains of today don't help: "Jeeps" and "Torpedo boats", feh.  No, there's no way a diesel-electric engine can be as interesting as even the most humble of steam trains.  One of the best moments of my life was riding on top of the coal tender of a steam loco at the Illinois Railway Museum whilst Larry, the husband of my cousin, played engineer for a time.  Sure, once I took my glasses off I looked like a negative raccoon, and I stank of smoke like I'd just walked out of the Towering Inferno, but it was a wonderous experience, one that's long gone.  For that alone, I feel like all diesel locos are evil.

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Type-Moon's 10th Anniversary OVA Carnival Phantasm has been consistently hilarious throughout its run, even when you aren't all that familiar with the characters being parodied.  For example, I've never seen Tsukihime, but I've been laughing harder at those skits than the Fate/Stay Night-based ones... and F/SN is one of my favorite shows.

However, I had heard a rumor that the 9th episode of Carnival Phantasm was going to be something I would find truly special... a Grand Prix race using the F/SN characters.  Eh?  Really?  So it was with a sense of  excitement that I started the episode... and imagine my surprise when the rumors appeared to be true!

Ooh! 

OOH!!

WHOA!!!
My heavens, could it be true?  I mean, sure, there was going to be silly things going on, but it really looked like we'd be getting a Formula 1 Grand Prix-style race for our enjoyment!  We haven't seen one of those since Yakitate Japan Ep44!  I was actually excited. 

Oh.  Never mind.  Wacky Races... or maybe Scramble Wars.  Darn it (*kicks imaginary pebble, sulks*).

I mean, Carnival Phantasm was probably the best chance I had to retire from blogging!  As I said somewhere, if there's ever an anime with F1 and rubber duckies involved, I'd shut The Pond down with no regrets.  And CP just blew it.  Oh well... better luck next time.

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Growing up in Duckford, Sunday night was PBS night.  Masterpiece Theater (Danger: UXB for the win!) went into Monty Python's Flying Circus, followed a half-hour later by Doctor Who (Fourth Doctor will always be the best).

In between Python and Doc was the incredibly unfunny The Two Ronnies.  The show, which ran from 1971 to 1987 on BBC1, is a perfect example of how the humor from one country may not translate to another, even if they nominally speak the same language.  Ronnie Barker (the stout one) and Ronnie Corbett (the short one) are apparently revered as something akin to comedy gods in Britain, with the show consisting of sketch comedy, opening and closing news parodies, and the legendary catchphrase "It's good night from me."  "And it's good night from him."  Some FIFTEEN MILLION PEOPLE tuned in each week to The Two Ronnies, a number which I can scarcely credit.  Perhaps they included dead people in the count.

I believe Official First Friend of The Pond Vaucaunson's Duck will agree with me when I say that it was the single most disappointing British TV show of all time, at least until Are You Being Humiliated Served? came on.  Having said that, it wasn't entirely awful.  Every now and again, they would manage to drag  a laugh or two out of us there in our cozy midwestern homes as we stayed up too late on a school night.  For example, allow me to present this:

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There's stuff coming on The Pond.  It just ain't here yet.  Trying to get the motivation going.  Have a picture:

More than this, deponent sayeth not.

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The USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) was the twenty-fifth of the fifty Casablanca-class escort carrier built.  Constructed in just over two months by the Kaiser Company shipyard in Vancouver, WA, she weighed in at just over 10000 tons at full load.  At full steam, she could move her crew of 860 men and the embarked "composite wing" of 28 planes at 19kts.  Like most other escort carriers, she wasn't designed to fight with the fleet.  Instead, CVEs were to be used first as stopgaps, then when bigger carriers became available, to free up the more capable CVs and CVLs to hunt for bigger targets.  In effect, the CVE became a air support unit, providing air cover for amphibious landings.  It was in this role that she was off Leyte as part of Taffy 2 when Admiral Kurita's fleet famously attacked Taffy 3.  Ommaney Bay helped sink one of the Japanese cruisers and aided in the defeat of the larger Japanese force.  And it was in the air support role that the Ommaney Bay was going to serve as she transited the Sulu Sea. 

Then the kamikazes came.

more...

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I've played a good 25 hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim over the past week, and will freely admit that I'm just agog over the thing.  The music and sound is astonishingly good.  Voice-acting is excellent for video games (average for just about any other form of entertainment, though).  The action is entertaining, puzzles are hard without being impossible, and Bethesda seems to have fixed the horrible level scaling problems of Oblivion (and to a lesser extent, Fallout 3).  No more bandits wearing Ebony armor and carrying Daedric longswords!

Where the game really impresses, however, are the graphics.  I'm not talking about the amazing vistas (which are rightly jawdropping), but just the incidentals.  For example, this scene:

Yes, that's right: it's a Skyrim chicken.  But look around the scene, too... everything looks so gosh-darned gorgeous, it's breathtaking.  It goes without saying that motion is everywhere: the waterwheel is turning, there's a little bit of smoke from a campfire wafting by, the chickens walk around, and on and on.

It's not all chickens and woodpiles, though.  The above is inside a watchtower that, over time, collapsed into the nearby lake... and was taken over by a few necromancers.  Poor guy up there was just looking for a place to keep the weather off his head while he slept.  The atmospherics make the scene creepy as all heck when you walk into the room: water leaking in, odd lighting, and echoing sounds just made me want to turn around and walk out.

They say that Skyrim has a history of amusing glitches.  I've only seen one, the conjoined guards there in the lower right.  Both heads turned to follow me around, too, so it's not "just" a glitchy graphic.

This?  Oh, just another piece of glorious Skyrimic scenery.  One of the moons with the Northern Lights shining nearby... it goes without saying that they shimmered and moved just like the auroras I've seen in real life.  I spent a good 10 minutes of real time watching them, until I was attacked by a pack of wolves.

A dragon, shortly before it decided that it really wanted nothing more in life than to kill me and chew on my bones.  It didn't get a chance to, though, as during the fight, I fell off a poorly-placed cliff.  Oops.

I may have mentioned this, but Skyrim does "big" very, very well.  Above, watching the sun rise from atop a mountain peak near Azura's Shrine.

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1 Well, it's certainly prettier than Terraria.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 02, 2012 12:35 AM (PiXy!)

2 For all its failings, it's operating on a scale that's an order of magnitude larger than an ordinary game. Say what you will about Bethseda, but for ambition, their games are unmatched.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 02, 2012 01:46 AM (pWQz4)

3 But where are the screen shots of ducks?

Posted by: Siergen at January 02, 2012 02:52 PM (GcG9m)

4

When I see those pictures, what it says to me is that they spend a titanic amount of time and resources on model-making. I can't imaging just how huge must be the library of meshes and textures.

Lots of games shortcut those, and we're all used to seeing dozens or hundreds of copies of The Box or The Explosive Barrel. It looks like these guys didn't take quite so much of a shortcut.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 02, 2012 04:45 PM (+rSRq)

5 From what I've read, all the terrain in the game is custom mapped.  If a player goes to that exact point near the Shrine of Azura, they'll be able to get the exact same picture.  They didn't take quite as much care on "The Box" or "The Barrel," but there are multiples of "The Box."

Only one chicken model, though.

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 02, 2012 06:52 PM (f/6aJ)

6

Only one chicken model, though.

Enough about the chicken - where are the ducks? 

Posted by: Siergen at January 02, 2012 07:11 PM (GcG9m)

7 The Ducks are exclusive downloadable content.

Posted by: Mauser at January 02, 2012 11:40 PM (cZPoz)

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Yet another year is about to pass into the history books, taking with it 315 posts (including this one) here at The Pond.  What were the highlights of the past 12 months?

In the world of Formula 1, everything got going by... not getting going.  First, Robert Kubica suffered a hideous accident during a rally race, nearly severing his hand.  Multiple surgeries over four or five months allowed him to recover use of his body, but his racing career may be over. Then the Grand Prix of Bahrain was cancelled due to the "Arab Spring" revolutions, and the country's heavy-handed methods of dealing with it.  Pirelli took over as the tire provider for F1.  Just before the season began, Jenson Button took the 2008 McLaren MP4-23 around the Mount Panorama circuit in Australia, providing us with The Greatest F1 Picture Ever.  The season started in a way that we'd soon get used to: Seb Vettel ran away and hid after the first lap, eventually winning by a comfortable 15 second margin.  At the second race weekend  in Malaysia, there was a rash of tire-related problems, included the worst flat-spot ever.  Oh, Vettel won again, too.  China brought us one of the best races of the year.  It started off with Lewis Hamilton's McLaren spewing fuel all over his pit stall and having to go to the grid with its rear covers removed.  Then his teammate, Jenson Button, tried to make a pitstop in Red Bull's box... one of the funniest moments of the year.  It ended with Hamilton passing Vettel for the eventual win towards the end of the race, to boot.  The Turkish Grand Prix saw a record number of pit stops (80, a number that would fall later in the season) and another win by Vettel.  He won in Spain, too.  Qualifying at Monaco brought us a nasty accident, with Sergio Perez slamming into a barrier sideways.  He suffered a bad concussion that kept him out of two races.  The race itself was shaping up to be a nail-biting race to the finish between Vettel, HWMNBN and Button... and then a red flag put paid to all that.  Vettel won.  Canada brought us the Race of the Year, despite half of it being run behind the Safety Car due to torrential rains.  It was also the longest F1 race ever, clocking in at 4 hours and 14 minutes in duration.  Button won after he pressured Vettel into a mistake on the final lap.  SPEED brought us "Seat Swap" two days later, where Lewis Hamilton and Tony Stewart traded cars for a few laps around Watkins Glen.  Vettel blew the rest of the field away in Valencia, the least interesting race of the season.  Ferrari got a win at Britain as HWMNBN brought his steed in ahead of the Red Bulls.  No worries though, as Vettel made an appearance on Top Gear where he set the fastest lap of all F1 drivers around their track... and came across as a really likeable young man.  Bastard.  Hamilton was victorious in Germany, while his teammate won in Hungary.  It was actually a good race at Budapest, aided by rain for only the second time in the Grand Prix's history.  Button won that one, too.  These three races were the longest stretch during the season where Vettel didn't win.  For some reason, Spa brought with it ennui and angst, and it took me a solid week to actually do a (sorta) F1 Update!.  Italy brought another Vettel win, as did Singapore.  Button won in Japan, but it hardly mattered as Vettel wrapped up the Driver's Championship with a second-place finish.  Much to everybody's shock and surprise, Lewis Hamilton took the pole at Korea, the first (and only) time a Red Bull wasn't at the top of the grid all season.  Vettel still won, his 10th victory of the year.  The race weekend was marred by the death of IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon.  The F1 Circus had their first ever race in India, while the first practice session drew only the second liveblogging attempt here at The Pond.  All of that nearly paled in comparison to the announcement that a second Grand Prix will be held here in the USA starting in 2013.  Abu Dhabi saw Vettel retire for the first time all year, and Hamilton took advantage for his third win.  Finally, Vettel set an all-time F1 record with his 15th pole position in Brazil.  Mark Webber got his first win of the year at the last race, taking advantage of a "mechanical problem" on Vettel's car.  After the season, Mumbles Raikkonnen signed with Renault-to-be-Lotus, adding a sixth World Champion to the grid for 2012.

On the Military History front, there's actually a Military History category now!  Just in time, too, because 2011 was a great year for those of us who dig that type of thing.  It all got rolling when I gave logistics vessels got some love by unofficially declaring the Cimmaron a "Hero Ship."  The Langley got a short history which was something I'd been meaning to do for a few years.  Reading Norman Polmar's "Aircraft Carrier, Vol 1" introduced me to something I'd never heard of, the LSTCV and the Brodie Device.  An offhand comment on another site led to the year's first major article, how an earthquake was the genesis of an aircraft carrier.  The only Pacific Q-Ship got a note, and I took a closer look at the damage the Yorktown suffered at the Coral Sea, and the "miracle" of the Pearl Harbor repair yards afterward.  I was asked what the actual reason for the Japanese attack on Midway was, which led to a reader completely missing the point of this blog.  The second major article, on the whole concept of battlecrusiers, came around at the end of June.  My favorite "Name This Mystery Ship" entry proved to be a tough one, but the pictures rocked.  The third major article fell into my lap and while a lot of the post was historical fiction, Harry's Life was a blast to write... and based on a true story.  Maybe.  Later information cast some doubt on some of the details.  Writing the post on the PBY Catalina was like pulling teeth, but still turned out to be pretty good.  A post on the Flight To Nowhere may have been the crowning glory of the year, both for the MilHist category and for The Pond in general.  The Battle of Midway Roundtable even picked it up, which had me walking on air.  Finally, the first two parts of a three-part series on which WWII fighter was the best came out.  Part I is here, and Part II can be found here.  Part III is still in the planning stages.  Still, that'll be a great way to begin 2012, right?

Then there was Anime.  While I watched a lot of shows, only one series caught my imagination strongly enough to get me to actually write about it.  To say that Rio Rainbow Gate! was an odd choice to do that is something of an understatement; to be blunt, it wasn't a particularly good show.  Indeed, my writeup on Episode 1 was vicious in my distaste.  But then something weird happened: I kept watching.  Next thing I knew, I was doing an episodic recap each week... and both hating and enjoying it!  The writeups are right here: Ep04, Ep05, Ep06, Ep07, Ep08, Ep09, Ep10, Ep11, Ep12 and Ep13.  That should have been the end of it, but the masochistic completest in me insisted I go back and do recaps of the two episodes I "missed' the first time around: Episode 02 and Episode 03.  THAT should have been the end of it, but like a venereal disease, Rio Rainbow Gate! was the gift that kept on giving.  The DVD/BD only Episode 14 came out, and the episodic writeup turned out to be the longest post in the history of The Pond, coming in at 4132 words.

Not a bad year, that.  And that doesn't even include things like the Saturday Night Tunage posts!  With any luck, 2012 will be as good or better... and more importantly, y'all will keep showing up to read them.  Couldn't do it without you folks, and I appreciate your time.

Now let's all go put on silly hats and do goofy things.

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It's been a while since I paid much attention to goings-on in the Formula 1 world, I know.  While I was having lunch with Ph.Duck today, he asked me to give him an update on the news of the Grand Circus... and I couldn't do it!  I've really kinda stopped reading up on F1 over the past month.  But no more!  Let's get caught up on the hithering and yonning of that form of motorsport that we love so much!

The biggest news is that the Silly Season is almost over!  22 of the 24 seats for the 2012 F1 season have been filled.  Only two teams still have open seats.  Shall we take a look at the driver lineup as we know it?

Unsurprisingly, some teams are running with the same drivers as in 2011.  Red Bull (Vettel and Webber), McLaren (Button and Hamilton), Ferrari (HWMNBN and Massa),  Mercedes (Slappy and Rosberg), Sauber (Gandalf and Perez) and Caterham-who-was-Lotus (Kovaleinninninnie and Trulli) have made no changes.  These choices all make sense.  Sauber's pair show promise (and Sergio Perez has enough sponsorship money via Carlos Slim to buy a team to boot), and Caterham-nee-Lotus' drivers are a great combination of intelligence and speed, perfect for a newer team.

Renault, which is now Lotus, not to be confused with Caterham who was Lotus, has brought former F1 World Driver's Champion Mumbles Raikkonen back into the sport.  He'll be teamed with young Lettuce Grosjean, who we saw for a half-season in 2009... where he failed to impress.  However, the past two years have been kind to the Swiss-born Frenchman.  He was Pirelli's prime tire-tester in 2010, and he won the GP2 series championship in 2011.

Force India is bringing back one of their 2011 drivers for the new season.  The surprise is that it ISN'T Adrian Sutil.  Instead, we'll be seeing another year of the Paul di Resta Experience.  He'll be joined by Nico (The Incredible) Hulkenberg, who we last saw sitting on pole at Interlagos in 2010 for Williams.  In 2011, he was FIndia's reserve driver, so he'll just step right in.

During the 2011 season, both Toro Rosso drivers (DJ Squire and Seb Buemi) were rumored to be losing their seat at one time or another.  It was assumed that only one would be axed to make way for up-and-comer Jean-Eric Vergne.  While it's true that Vergne has taken one of the seats, both 2011 drivers got it in the neck.  Teaming with Vergne will be Daniel Ricciardo, who we saw with HRT for the back half of 2011, taking over from Narain Kittylitter.  To me, this is the biggest surprise so far.  Both DJ Squire and Seb Buemi are good enough to drive in F1, and like Hulkenberg last season, both are deserving of a drive.  To date, neither have one.

Virgin is changing their name for 2012, becoming Marussia F1... and in case you're wondering, Marussia is Russia's first sports-car manufacturer.  Tim O'Glockenspiel will be returning for the 2012 season.  He'll be joined by French rookie Charles Pic.  Pic finished fourth in GP2 last season, and reportedly looked good in the New Driver's Test at Abu Dhabi... good enough that he was given two full days behind the wheel, instead of the day-and-a-half originally scheduled.

Williams is the first of the teams that still has an opening.  Pastor Maldonado, who drove with the team in 2011, has one drive locked up.  The seat held by Rubens Barrichello last year is the one that remains open.  His contract has expired, and Williams hasn't shown any interest in resigning him.  With Adrian Sutil, DJ Squire and Seb Buemi still on the market, they're guaranteed a talented, experienced driver if that's the way they want to go.  They could also go for a sponsorship-heavy newbie driver, which might be for the best.  There were reports of funding shortages last season for Williams, a sad state of affairs for such a legendary F1 marque.

Finally, HRT has the other free seat.  In the offseason, they signed Pedro de la Rosa (aka "Pete Rose"), who will be 41 as the season starts, to be their lead driver.  To be blunt, this is probably the greatest off-season move of any team... including the return of Mumbles Raikkonen.  Pete Rose, who we last saw in a one-off appearance for Sauber at Canada in 2011 (filling in for the severely concussed Sergio Perez), has a reputation for being the World's Greatest Test Driver, having filled that position for McLaren for most of the past decade.  He's also had a few half-seasons as a full-time driver, most recently in 2010 with Sauber.  He'll be a great fit with HRT, who needs an experienced, skillful wheelman if they're going to catch up to Caterham and become a "real team."  Their second seat will almost certainly go to the driver with the biggest wallet.

Two seats, many many drivers: it's like a multi-million dollar game of Musical Chairs!

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I have a confession to make.  To most of my readers, I am a duck of high good fair okay I haven't killed anybody today acceptable moral standing.  Except for my strange fascination with Rio Rainbow Gate! of course.  I try to avoid swearing, both online and in real life.  I've generally succeeded in not being a jerk.  However, like everybody else, there is a dark secret that I've kept hidden from The Pond's readers.

To whit... I smoke.

I got into the habit in grad school.  It was the end of my first trimester (yes, three terms per school year, plus a summer session.  Weirdest damn thing I've ever heard, but there you are), and I was acing all my classes save for one: Theatre History.  In that particular class, it was going to come down to the final exam.  If I did well, I'd get an B in the class.  If I didn't do well, I'd get... something less than a B, be put on academic probation and perhaps have my scholarship and in-state tuition taken away.  The good news was that the final would be multiple choice and short answer.  The bad news was that it'd be 200 questions, cover the entire class, and you got 90 minutes.  Any questions not answered would be marked wrong.  And so the studying began.  Every night, on top of my already crushing homework load, I would devote large amounts of time to my copy of Brockett's History of the Theatre (though I believe it was the third edition, not the 10th), hoping to memorize the darn thing.  And when I say "crushing," I mean it.  My daily schedule ran something like this: 8am to 11am: classes.  11am to 12noon: office hours.  12noon to 1pm: lunch.  1pm to 5pm: scene shop/graduate assistantship.  5pm to 6pm: dinner.  6pm to Midnight: rehearsals.  Midnight to 3 or 4am: homework.  Obviously weekends were somewhat less stressful, consisting of "wake up: homework.  6pm: performance.  Midnight: party.  I'd get some more studying done on Sunday in between performances.  One night as I tried to shoehorn another chapter from another book into this routine, I took a cigarette from my roommate's pack.  It seemed to calm me down... so I had another.  The next day, I got a pack for myself... and it went from there.  When I came home that Christmas, Momzerduck saw me with a cigarette and wailed "it's all (her) fault!" for she smoked when I was young.  I pointed out that she wasn't even in the vicinity when I started and the blame was mine alone... and I kept smoking.

For the next 20 years.  Even after The Cardiac Incident, I smoked, though that did begin the fight to quit.  I eventually cut back to less than two packs a week, but I could never take that final step and quit completely.  Until now.  I am proud to say that I've gone 20 days without a cigarette, and while I still have the urge to light one up (particularly after dinner), I haven't done so.  Guess some good has come from that darn tooth extraction after all, because that was the impetus.  "Don't smoke or you'll get dry socket," the dentist said.  I got dry socket anyway, and he said "don't smoke or you'll make it worse."  It got worse anyway.  Then I realized it'd been 10 days so I just... didn't smoke.  I'm not going to say that I'm done with it, because I suspect it's a case of "once an addict, always an addict," but so far so good.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:50 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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No actual contest this time around, as this one would be too easy to brute-force, but nevertheless: Name This Mystery Ship!

Get it right, and you will gain the people's ovation and fame forever.  Get it wrong, and... uhm... nothing will happen.  So there!

UPDATE: Since nobody's gotten it yet, I'll just give the answer.  The ship pictured is CVE-123, the USS Tinian.  She was completed in just under six months, and was launched in September 1945.  She was never actually comissioned, sailing right from acceptance trials into the Pacific Reserve Fleet where she sat until 1970.  She was struck from the list on June 1st, 1970, and sold for scrap 18 months later.  The Tinian had never been a US Navy warship.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:32 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Now that the 12 Days of Duckmas is over and done with, I just want to chat about a couple of unimportant things.  Think of it as conversation over hot chocolate and scones... or a good reuben and a Sprite, if you're looking for something more dinner-like.

First up, I'm going to do something that almost never happens: I'm going to praise my broadband company.  I have no idea who they are, as my internet connection is through Pond Central's apartment complex, but a few days ago they sent us a flyer saying that they were going to perform "maintenance on our modems" that would take about an hour.  I can only assume that the maintenance was successful:

See, I used to max out around 170kB/s down, 25kB/s up.  That's fast enough to essentially stream a 300mb anime episode, more or less... a half-hour or so to download 24 minutes.  If there were two or more things downloading, you might as well go take a nap while they trickled down to your hard-drive.  But now?  That 650kB/s is actually a little on the slow side!  800kB/s has been common, or even faster when broken between two d/ls: I saw one file with 490kB/s with a second getting 440kB/s.  Uploads have been sitting around 100kB/s.  I just want to giggle about it, it's so much fun!

Speaking of fun...

I haz a Skyrim!  Blogging might be somewhat light.  Okay, lighter.  I've played a couple of hours so far, and even at "medium" graphics settings, it's gorgeous.  Or more correctly, it is on those rare occasions when there isn't a blizzard going on.  Which is cool in and of itself, as weather was NOT a part of the game's predecessor Oblivion.  I've sank maybe 300 hours of playtime into Oblivion, and I can easily see myself doing the same with Skyrim.  Once I get a little bit of the game under my belt, I'll do something a little more formal for The Pond than this, but initial reactions are "wow" and "holy crepe!"

Okay, that's all.  Back to Skyrim for me... after I eat something.

UPDATE:

This is the most beautiful game I've ever seen.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:15 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Oh, seeing this post after completing & posting Thursday's comic is priceless. Bwahahaha...

Posted by: GreyDuck at December 26, 2011 10:36 PM (eHm8o)

2 That's just cruel, GD... gonna keep us waiting until Thursday?  Mean.

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 26, 2011 10:47 PM (f/6aJ)

3 The comic posts when the comic posts, you know.
As for Skyrim itself: For all the game's flaws (and they are legion), I will say that they clearly paid for a top-notch art director who earned every penny of their considerable salary to make sure that this game looks positively stunning. It's not that the graphics technology in play is itself all that revolutionary ("2D sprite" grassoids, for instance) or that the color palette is much more varied than other games (it isn't) but what's there is used so cleverly and (dare I say it) artfully that you just don't mind when you can see the seams up close.
Half the times I've been surprised by an ambush have been on account of just wandering the landscape, not paying attention to the threat profiles but instead merely gazing at the scenery. It's that kind of game.

Posted by: GreyDuck at December 27, 2011 05:59 PM (3m7pZ)

4 Bit off topic, but in terms of amazing artwork, and Ducks....

http://real-sonkes.deviantart.com/art/Darkwing-Duck-274201997

This and the two links in the description are some very Badass takes on Darkwing Duck.  Does he count?

Posted by: Mauser at December 28, 2011 07:43 AM (cZPoz)

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I can't really add anything to that. 

Another Duckmas season has come and gone.  The Flock have already opened their gifts and are busy doing what duckies do on Duckmas morning: having a breakfast of freshly baked rye bread and orange juice (duckies love orange juice).  Their party gives me a chance to sneak off and wish you, my readers, happiness and security for the coming year.

And ducks.  Lots and lots of ducks.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Imagine, if you will, that you have the ability to travel back in time and space to one location during World War II.  You will not be able to influence events, nor will your presence be noticed, but you will be able to see and understand anything you'd like in that location.  Even if you don't know the language being spoken, you will know what's being said, what's being written, so on and so forth.  You will, for all intents and purposes, be the ultimate historian.  You can travel, but only as far as conveyances of the day can take you: if you wanted to see the bombing of Coventry from the air you can, but it'd be from one plane only.  If you want to observe the Marianas Turkey Shoot, it can only be from one p.o.v. (though you could start on an aircraft carrier and "board" a plane, even a fighter).

Perhaps unsurprisingly considering my personal interests, I'd choose the Battle of Midway.  More specifically, I'd choose to station myself on the bridge of the USS Hornet, just so I could find out what REALLY happened leading up to the "Flight To Nowhere", and what occurred afterwards.  I'd probably jump into Stanhope Ring's SBD to find out his reactions and to see his heading choice.

My second pick would to be onboard the Akagi on June 4th, 1942.  To see the events of Midway unfold from the standpoint of the Japanese would be nigh-on invaluable.  My third choice would be May 27, 1941, onboard the HMS Rodney, to witness the sinking of the Bismarck, and to see if the Rodney really did torpedo the German battleship.

So what event would you choose?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:48 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 I'd want to watch the planning for Operation Seelowe, to find out if it was a feint, or if Hitler really meant to go through with it. I've never found a straight answer to that, and it may be that no one knows.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 24, 2011 03:15 PM (+rSRq)

2 I was to see why MacArthur's planes were caught on the ground, in the Philippines, even though he had plenty of warning after the attack on Pearl.

Posted by: Siergen at December 24, 2011 04:11 PM (GcG9m)

3 Steven took my first choice. I had also always wondered about that.

Second:

I would want to be on the Yamato during the action off Samar to find out why Kurita snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  No offense intended to Taffy3 who fought well and hard to the last, but the way was clear after the Johnston went down....yet....

Posted by: brickmuppet at December 25, 2011 12:59 AM (EJaOX)

4 Hitler's bunker when he shot himself.  I mean, who wouldn't want to see that over and over again? :-)

Tokyo when the decision to attack the US was made, or the Japanese Embassy to find out if it really was accidental that the war declaration was simply late.

Maybe watch Audy Murphy in action to witness true heroism.

If we weren't confined to WWII, I'd want to find out what happened to Amelia Erhart.

Posted by: Mauser at December 25, 2011 06:08 AM (cZPoz)

5 Mauser, is this what you were wondering about? 

Posted by: Siergen at December 25, 2011 01:40 PM (GcG9m)

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