Monday begins a run of 12 straight days at work, culminating in the beginning of the Fall semester at Duck U.

For all intense porpises (say it out loud), this is the Duck U. Bookstore's Christmas season. The textbook biz isn't like regular retail, really. Our "Christmas Season" is about three weeks long and is seperated into two distinct pieces by a period of about 5 months. Then we go into minor hibernation.

In those three weeks, though, the Duck U. Bookstore will do roughly 75-80% of our yearly sales. That's not too extreme in this biz; I know of one store that does 95% of their $1.5 million in sales in three days (caveat: they're a high school. The place is still a madhouse in those three days, though). The rest of the year's sales is clothing and supplies, essentially.

So, knowing all that, I'm still going to try and blog every day. Don't be surprised if I fail miserably, though.

I also have the entire CardCaptor Sakura series to watch sometime... 18 DVDs (thanks for the heads-up a week or so ago, Steven), 70-some-odd episodes, for less than $80? For what's considered one of the best anime series of all time? Sign me up for that!

It appears that TRSI found some type of deal at Amazon.com. The first 15 DVDs were shrinkwrapped together with an Amazon barcode on it, then the last three DVDs were shrinkwrapped to THAT. As long as they all work, and as long as it isn't that nightmarish English version, Cardcaptors, I don't care where it came from, at that price!

Right, I'm off to go plunder a cave near Skingrad now (i.e., still playing Oblivion)!

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Okay, so I haven't posted in a few days. I've got a good excuse. No, really, I do!

My excuse is called OBLIVION, and it's consuming a lot of my waking hours that aren't spent at work.

Fascinating game. Beautiful to look at, fun to play, engrossing world. It actually reminds me of the 'old days' of pen & paper D&D... Hey, Vaucanson's Duck! What was the name of your campaign again?

I've been playing for about 20 hours now, and I'm only 2nd level... which is fine with me. I'm still learning the game.

But oh, what fun it is to learn!

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My life has been thrown completely askew the past couple of days. I'm not entirely at liberty to explain ALL of the reasons behind this in public, but lets just say I'm really looking forward to the race this Sunday. It's something normal for me to root myself to.

If you're really curious, feel free to e-mail me. I wouldn't mind explaining the whole thing.

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Nope, not feelin' it tonight. I should be doing the F1 UPDATE!, and I'll get around to it eventually, but it's not happening right now.

Monday night, there'll be an UPDATE!, but I can't do it tonight.

Sorry.

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Twenty years ago, give or take a few weeks, I graduated from High School.

Tomorrow is my class's first reunion. I'm not going (for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that she that hatched me will be returning from New Mexico tomorrow, and I have to pick her up at the airport. Another reason is that I truly hated my HS years, and I could probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of people I'd truly like to see from back then... and have fingers left over).

But I did have a mini-reunion with two of my best friends from then tonight. Paul and Jeff, guys I've known since grade school... and guys that, after graduation from HS, I lost track of for the most part. Jeff I've seen a couple of times in 20 years, but Paul? We graduated, he went to one college, I went to another, and *poof*.

But tonight? All three of us were older, we all looked slightly different (two pairs of glasses, less hair, more weight, etc), we're all more or less successful in our chosen fields (a bookstore manager, a coffeeshop owner, and a computer-chip designer? Eclecticism, your table is ready...), but it was like we'd not been apart.

Paul? Jeff? Had a blast tonight; thank you!

Maybe I'll go to the picnic thing on Sunday after all...

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I'll be honest, folks. I don't much feel like blogging recently. I'll be here for the race, of course, but I'm going to take a breather for a few days.

I've tried to do a post a day, but sometimes it's been more like work than fun, and that's not what I wanted from this (I'm not sure what it was I was looking for, but I DO know that wasn't it).

So I'm going to take a few days off.

If you have any ideas about what you'd like to see me write about, lemme know.

"Be seeing you."

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Sorry for the lack of updates. My boss gave me an ick. I'm coughing more or less constantly, which makes it difficult to concentrate. So does the nyquil.

Back later when I'm feeling better.

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Okay, you've probably noticed that The Pond has been off-line a bit recently. Friend Pixy, who kindly gives many of us lost souls a place to blog, collectively called MuNuVia, reports that after the Great DDoS Attack of last month, now Kei and Yuri, the MuNu servers, are being innundated with trackback spam.

Soooo... MuNuVia is moving servers. More detail as the date of the move becomes better known. If Pixy says it needs to be done, it needs to be done; maybe when he puts up a tipjar...

In F1 News, the Honda 400 team finally made their runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats this week. The team, using a slightly modified version of the 2005 BAR-Honda F1 car, managed to hit 397.something kph, or just slightly less than 250mph. They actually hit the magic 400kph on the first pass, but the wind on the second kept the average below.

Yes, Steven, I know... but at least F1 cars can turn. And go more than a quarter-mile before their engines blow up (the 2006 Honda not included).

In Anime News, I just finished The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and will try to get a full review/writeup of the show posted this weekend. My quick thumbnail is "Pretty darn good!"

Finally, Official First Overseas Reader Flotsky has a spiffy new look to his blog, "Just Another Geek." Go over and "oooh" and "ahhh" at it, why don't you?

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The first was a computer-controlled main battle tank. It could be stopped.

The second was a computer-controlled main battle tank with two turrets. It could be stopped.

But the third... you could drop a nuke on it, and it wouldn't notice. It was 40meters long, could move over broken terrain at 45kph, and its armor thickness was measured in feet. And it was smart.

The Mk.III was the first cybernetic tank to be worthy of the name that the project had been designated:

OGRE.

And I grew up playing with them.

Or, more correctly, playing the game.

The first, and arguably the most famous, of Steve Jackson's games (Illuminati and Car Wars are two others by him), I started playing Ogre when I was in grade school, if you can imagine. By the time I was in high school, there had been two sequels (GEV and Battlesuit), a computer game, many magazine articles, a deluxe version of the original, and even miniatures.

Somewhere at my folks' place, I still have Laumer, my Ogre Mk.V miniature (named after Keith Laumer, the author of the many Bolo novels and short stories).

I haven't played in years, but the good times came flooding back when I read SDB's little piece about one of his readers' website.

Oh, and Steven? The defenders really do win around 50% of the time. That's how well the game is balanced... except with the "four howitzer defense," which really can be a gamebreaker.

Against a Mk.IV, on the other hand...

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Chiyo-chan had some elective surgery performed today. Out went the old wimpy 300w power supply that came with her, in went the beefier ThermalTake 430watter. A note to CowPuters: while I admire your dedication to perfection (*cough*), I don't think you really needed to go to the ridiculous lengths you did for the mounting brackets for the PSU, unless of course you INTENDED to make it difficult to put in a different one... in which case you did a fine job indeed!

Oh, and ThermalTake? I love the new PSU, but did you intend for it to power two computers? Because that's how many extra cables and molex connectors I've got tied up, unused, coming out of the thing (hmmm... maybe a small-formfactor box on top of Chiyo-chan?).

All of that was preparation for the fun stuff: an eVGA GeForce 7600 GT graphics card. Finally, Chiyo-chan can run graphically challenging games without breaking down and crying and dribbling snot out of her nose. It's amazing how easy it was, once I figured out the tool-free retention system ("Oh, THAT'S what that lever is for... so I don't need the grapefruit?"). MUCH easier than installing the FX 5200 I had in my old computer.

The colors! The images! The volumetric fog! The anti-aliasing! Smoke in Sid Meier's PIRATES! is actually smoky (and look! There's dolphins swimming next to my pirate flagship, The Webbed Foot!) and people actually look... um... human!

I'd giggle, except ducks don't giggle.

Much.

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Yes, that's right. I AM SDB (scroll to the post marked 20060705.1945).

I am also Pixy Misa and James Lileks. I just post here so I don't ruin my cover.

What cover? You'll have to ask Reynolds... he's the one that gave it to me, and I'm not sure that I should say anything.

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Well, I dunno. Not much to blog about right now... I'm nibbling on a few different anime series at the moment, hoping one hooks me. Not much going on the F1 front, since the Circus is moving from N. America to Europe this week.

Oh, I had inquiries from Vaucanson's Duck when he was here about Yuji Ide's current doings. Fast Yuji is going back to Formula Nippon; he'll be racing for a team with the unlikely name of DoCoMo Dandelion.

Talk amongst yourselves, I suppose. Anybody have anything they want to share? Have anything you'd like me to dig into?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:21 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Happy Fourth of July, America! I'm going to put my webbed feet up, watch some baseball (America's Game), have some hot dogs and beer (Monty Python's Holy Ale from England... we're not old enough to make good beer here in the USA ourselves), take an All-American Nap, then later tonight, step out on my balcony and watch the fireworks.

It's a wonderful thing.

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One year ago, during the runup to the Canadian Grand Prix, Wonderduck's Pond was born!

While it may be my Blogiversary, without you folks, The Pond's readers, there wouldn't BE a Pond. "You few, you happy few, you band of lunatics...." You've made doing this thing fun!

Special nods of the head go to:

Mallory, the Official First Reader (who's computer has been coughing and sputtering for the past couple of months), who convinced me to blog in the first place, so others could enjoy the F1 Updates! that I e-mailed her every race, and who was kind enough to give me a link in her weekly column on wrestling (which brought me the Official Oversea's Reader, Flotsky!)

A special nod of the head to SDB, who has been kind enough to link to me on occasion (even if his tastes in motorsports border on the boorish).

And a gigantic 'Thank You' to Pixy Misa, who lets the Pond muck up his servers, and got me away from Blogspot Hell. Also near as I can tell, the only Pond reader in Australia.

Thanks, everybody. Now lets go put on silly hats and make odd noises!

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Okay, so I'm a couple years behind the curve on this one, but still. My friend The Librarian and I have been getting together on Fridays more or less every week or so for what we've taken to calling "Anime Night." You may remember Pockypalooza from a few months ago? That was part of Anime Night.

Well, after we finished up World of Narue, The Librarian asked if I was interested in watching Firefly. I had remembered seeing part of an episode when it was running on TV, and I'll admit it didn't thrill me much, but the good publicity it has gotten since then made me want to give it another shot.

Boy oh boy, am I glad I did. Take one part Sci-Fi, mix with two parts Western, shake, pour. What you get is something pretty different from any SF thing I'd ever seen.

But, as in all good SF (if not all good storytelling), it's the characters that make it work. This ensemble cast is great together! The hardbitten Captain, that in a lesser series would have a 'heart of gold but doesn't really here. The XO that's devoted to both her Captain and her husband, the lighthearted Helmsman. The Engineer that's a 'natural mechanic' with a penchant for strawberries. The roughneck that seems pretty dumb until you realize he's one of the main comedic elements in the show (and not because he's dumb!). All of them making a living on the edge of legality... well, okay, on the wrong side of legality, but lets not quibble.

Then you have the passengers! A "Companion," sort of a mix of geisha, prostitute, and therapist, and the most respected person on the ship (though not by the Captain, exactly...). The Shepherd, a missionary sort who has what appears to be a VERY interesting past (just why DOES he know so much about criminal activites anyway?). The Doctor, a pampered rich kid who threw it all away to rescue his Sister, who was the subject of much in the way of medical 'experiments,' who might just be able to read minds...

The humor in this show is incredible. It's just right: you know it's coming, but it doesn't get in the way of the drama/action/whatever. The show is basically episodic, and in one case completely outlandish (using a spaceship to pull a heist from a speeding train?), but it FEELS right.

So far, I can't praise this show enough. Okay, we've still got half the series to go, but it looks to me like Fox TV really, REALLY blew this one.

Rent it, buy it, whatever. Just... watch it. You'll be glad you did.

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1 Then watch the movie, and then brood over the fact that their shall be no more

Posted by: buttons at June 16, 2006 08:51 PM (pvJKm)

2 While I haven't seen the movie, I do kinda know what happens. They could probably stick another movie or two in there somewhere... but Buttons is right.

Which actually is kind of good, in a way. You know that you're getting into a series that actually has an ending, something we don't get much on TV over here.

Posted by: Wonderduck at June 17, 2006 12:32 AM (wZLWV)

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My blogging has been a little light this week. I'm still having fun with Chiyo-chan. I've been seeing what she can do, and been thinking only a little about "life, the universe, and Formula 1."

With the runup to Montreal and, more importantly, Indianapolis, however, expect a flurry of activity! My old friend, Vaucaunson's Duck, will be back in town (visiting from his pond in California) and we'll be watching the USGP together. Vauc has only seen three F1 races, and they've all been on (ugh!) CBS, so it's going to be quite the eye-opener... both for him (hearing a GOOD set of announcers; having an experienced fan to ask questions of) and for me (seeing the race thru the eyes of a 'rookie.').

Looking forward to it, I am! Vauc's a cool duck; he sorta accidentally became a F1 fan via this blog. So all you guys are to blame, too ("...but society is to blame." "It's a fair cop, so we'll be arresting them next.")!

Which brings me, through the realm of Monty Python, to a sad note. John Cleese can no longer do the Silly Walk. His doctor (presumably not E.H. Gumby) has forbidden it, due to the hip replacement surgery Cleese had recently. Indeed, Cleese believes the surgery was required in part BECAUSE of the Silly Walk.

Sad days indeed.

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Almost eight years ago, I purchased my current computer. It was THIS FAR from being the top of the line: 850MHz P-III, high-end graphics card, and a 7200rpm, 40gb harddrive (when 7200rpm had just come out, and 40gb was close to being the largest you could get).

It has served me well over the years, but it's been showing the wear of the years: I've had to replace the modem, the sound card, the graphics card, and added a DVD burner and another, 80gb, hard drive.

If I burn 90 minutes of video to DVD, it takes seven hours to chug through the conversion (and 5 minutes to burn the disc)... if Windows 98 doesn't die from the stress. Obviously, this sort of thing isn't acceptable anymore. Heck, I couldn't even play Civ 4, and that just will NOT stand.

So today, I went out and welcomed Chiyo-chan into my home. The harddrive that I added to the the old computer will go into an external hard-drive enclosure; that's Tadakichi-san.

Hopefully she'll be with me for a nice long time...

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No questions. Just go look (and LISTEN!) to this guy play!

I caught an interview with him on WGN-AM radio out of Chicago back in December, but missed his appearance on Conan O'Brien later. He's stunningly good at what he does.

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If you tried to visit The Pond this weekend, you may have had some difficulty doing so. According to Pixy, all of MuNuVia was under a concerted DoS attack.

Then, if that wasn't enough, one of the two servers that run the .mu.nu extensions coughed a hard-drive onto the carpet.

How's that for a weekend's entertainment?

Now, I've sung Pixy's praises before, but let me take a moment to do so again. He has given me, and many others, free space to roam and blog, in an environment friendly to such things. For all intents and purposes I have essentially unlimited resources to do so on the MuNu servers.

When I first started The Pond here at MuNu, he actually apologized to me for "taking so long" to set up my account; it took him three days to get around to doing it.

I had a need to download something recently. The way it was set up, however, meant that I would have to d/l it from home... taking about 16 hours on my dialup connection. When I mentioned that to Pixy, he allowed me to d/l the thing from him directly, using bandwidth that he pays for, just so I could use a computer at Duck U.

And he does all this for free. He's never asked for a penny. He has no tipjar on his blog.

For all of the above reasons, I hereby proclaim Pixy Misa to be an Honorary Duck, with all the glory that brings unto him.

Thanks, Pixy.

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1 Quack!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 04, 2006 07:28 PM (FRalS)

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...it's time to talk about the Marvel comic book character known as Wolverine. Over at Chizumatic, Steven says:

Wolverine has always struck me as being an odd one to be part of X-men, because he isn't really a mutant -- at least according to the Marvel origins. Canadian scientists operated on him and replaced essentially all his bones with metal replacements, and also installed those wonderful claws of his.

I spent nigh on two years working at a comic book/gaming store back in the early-mid-90s (which, coincidentally, is where I caught the anime bug). While I read a wide variety of comics when I was there, I 'specialized' in the X- series: X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Generation X, Cable, Excalibur, X-Force... and Wolverine.

In the Marvel Universe, Wolverine's bones weren't replaced by metal, but coated with unbreakable adamantium. And indeed, he thought that his claws WERE implanted by the Weapon X program scientists (his life before then was, at the time, completely unknown... he didn't even know if his name, Logan, really WAS his name).

In the classic Fatal Attractions storyline, it's revealed that his claws are actually made of bone covered with adamantium. This was as big a shock to Wolverine as it was to the readers; he assumed they had been implanted. Unfortunately, he found out the truth in a most uncomfortable way: Magneto, in the event that ultimately led to the creation of Onslaught, yanked the adamantium out of his body through his pores.

Ow.

It was his healing factor (which was his one acknowledged mutant power) that kept him alive, though grievously injured, during the end of the Fatal Attractions saga. Apocalypse eventually (2000) stuck the metal back onto Wolvie's skeleton, though if my memory serves, Logan wasn't thrilled about it before it happened (and the process turned him feral for a while).

So that's a somewhat long-winded way of saying "Wolverine's claws are made of bone." Yeesh.

Please understand that any of this information may be out of date. I haven't picked up a comic book probably in five years; knowing Marvel, it's entirely possible that it was discovered that Wolverine's bones are actually made out of cottage cheese or something.

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