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.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 03:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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."

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:15 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 03:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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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...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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