November 30, 2012
Well, THAT'S Just Creepy...
Yesterday, as I took a break at the Duck U Bookstore, I happened to glance at a copy of the local newspaper... and promptly my bill hit the floor. Gathering it up, I read the article again... and felt my feathery heart sink.
For much of the past month or so, there's been a terrible story coming out about a young woman who was murdered and her body dumped in the local river. Of course, the husband was suspected... they always are... but from what I'd been able to glean, the police didn't have enough proof to file charges.
Well, the other day the police DID charge the young woman's husband with first degree murder. The newspaper put his picture on the front page... which is why my bill hit the floor.
I knew him.
Heck, I
worked with him for a year. It's been maybe 15 years since I last saw the guy, when I walked out of RadioShanty to take over my bookstore, but I spent plenty of time at work with him before that. And he was just a regular guy.
To say that I was more than a little weirded out is an understatement. Still am, truth be told. 15 years changes a person, to be sure... I'm not the same duck I was when I was 29, after all... but one never expects to hear that someone you knew may be a murderer.
Here's something to get that thought out of your head: Nori-chan in a cow suit!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
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1
The first time I experienced that feeling was when my Cub Scout den leader shot her husband. The second was Hans Reiser. I'm hoping there won't be a third.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at December 01, 2012 12:20 AM (2XtN5)
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The ex-wife of one of my co-workers was found dead this morning. No details yet, just "He left early"...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at December 01, 2012 04:16 AM (pWQz4)
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*nod* I know how you feel. I attended high school, and was an aquaintance of a certain young female marine who was well known for conspiring to kill another girl with her boyfriend. It still weirds me out a little, as I remember eating lunch and chatting with her and friends in high school.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at December 01, 2012 09:28 AM (T5fuR)
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There was a cartoon with Bugs Bunny and Witch Hazel, and at one point Bugs muses, "It may be hard to believe, but she was somebody's baby once."
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 01, 2012 10:33 AM (uNl21)
5
Apparently this is more common than I thought...I had a similar experience to yours, WD, though a little more immediate. Several years ago a co-worker just didn't show up for work one day, and no one would really talk about why. Turns out he was gone because he was on trial in another state. I won't go into why, save that it was very serious and he definitely did it. I didn't even find out what it was all about until several months later - I happened to be on vacation in the same area he was being tried in and caught a radio broadcast about his conviction.
Posted by: Tagmec at December 01, 2012 08:57 PM (/63nx)
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If you had told me that there'd be this many people saying "me too!" to this post, I'd've been very sad.
I am very sad.
Posted by: Wonderduck at December 01, 2012 09:10 PM (LbiZL)
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An artist I used to know from the convention circuit (not a good friend, and definitely an odd individual) got busted for Kiddie Porn a month or so ago. I knew he was not entirely right, but not THAT far wrong. Reportedly it was pretty nasty stuff too.
Posted by: Mauser at December 02, 2012 08:51 AM (cZPoz)
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A human being has the capacity, at any moment, to act like a saint or like Stalin. Unfortunately, we don't always choose the former, and we often choose the latter. This is the down side of free will.
Posted by: Maureen O'Brien at December 03, 2012 05:43 PM (cvXSV)
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I may be just the only other guy (or duck) here who khows who Hans Reiser is.
BTW, one Mr. F., who worked at my department as a research faculty and was fairly instrumental in my early development as a programmer, ended hitting a co-worker with an axe (we lived in a country where guns were strictly banned), then hanging himself. I have a memento from him: a whitepaper on a new OS he was developing at this new job, printed on a matrix printer. It was back when it wasn't obvious that we'll have Linux taking over everything and making other OSes rather moot (except Windows and OSX/iOS, of course: I mean OS that a man can write). The project had a lot of merit for the time.
On the other side, one of my close friends from school ended falling under a train under suspicious circumstances. Probably was pushed as a practical joke or in a mugging scuffle. It was that kind of neighbourhood.
Posted by: Pete at December 03, 2012 11:32 PM (RqRa5)
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November 23, 2012
November 13, 2012
Aw, Crap On A Stick...
Steven had a stroke the other night.
'Round these here parts, there ain't nobody happy 'bout this. Get better soonest, Steven!
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Severe suckitude, indeed. Virtual fingers are firmly crossed for a speedy and full recovery.
Posted by: GreyDuck at November 13, 2012 09:09 PM (xbP2x)
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God, SDB is one we can afford to lose like we can Tam: as in not at all. Glad you read the comments - I hadn't and your news was a bolt from the blue.
Been a fan since the Clueless days...
Posted by: The Old Man at November 14, 2012 02:40 PM (dBz2M)
3
Thank you for posting this. I hadn't looked at the comments on his 'sick' thread, just assuming he was down for a couple of days.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at November 15, 2012 11:51 AM (T5fuR)
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November 10, 2012
I'm On A Horse
I've been playing
Skyrim again. This is my horse, Shadowmere.
As you can tell by the glowing eyes, Shadowmere is kind of a badarse. I've seen him go head-first into a dragon's breath, come out the other side on fire, and start kicking all sorts of dragon butt. There's another talent Shadowmere has, however... one that's much more valuable.
more...
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It would seem he can walk on water, too.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 10, 2012 10:30 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Eadwacer at November 10, 2012 11:45 PM (jqMKP)
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It suddenly makes sense - how the dragons can fly, how your horse can walk up walls.
The people in Skyrim are, by our measure, no more than an inch tall. Your horse has teeny tiny hairs on its feet like a gecko. And while a sixty-foot dragon couldn't lift its weight off the ground even with a JATO assist, a six-inch one could do aerobatics like a hummingbird.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 11, 2012 07:14 AM (PiXy!)
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Interesting bit: a guy I used to be friends with, in Iowa, built a huge and elaborate D&D campaign world, and it was called
Shadomyr.
Posted by: Ed Hering at November 11, 2012 10:57 AM (7I+sl)
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Skyrim has catgirls. Please, think of the catgirls.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at November 11, 2012 11:51 PM (2XtN5)
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Mounts do that in Everquest2, also. Even if it's something like your stairs picture, but only the edge of a carpet on the ground. Mount sits at a 45-degree angle with his hindquarters sunk into the ground.
Which is an improvement over what the graphics engine did a couple-three years ago, when any mount would always be perfectly level (no pitch or roll) no matter what he was standing on...
Posted by: Mikeski at November 12, 2012 12:12 AM (1bPWv)
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November 08, 2012
A Nightly Walk
What have we here, thought Mouse as he saw the figure stroll by. It was a dark night, but there was enough light from the tavern windows to see that the... man? Woman?... was well-dressed in a foreign style.
Perfect, nobody local will miss... him, Mouse decided as he slipped away from the tavern and through the shadows. Mouse wasn't the best thief in the world, but he was plenty good.
Good enough to take this guy without having to work hard. He's not even paying attention... well, his loss is my gain, he said to himself. He had given himself the nickname "Mouse" a long time ago, because his mother had thought that "Marei" was a nice name for a boy. That he could scurry through the darkness like an small rodent helped with the nickname, too. He'd made a good living taking pouches and wallets in the Dark Quarter of the City, and often enough further up The Hill too. That's where he got the blade he now loosened in its scabbard, the blade that his appraiser friend told him was part skymetal. Not the whole thing, but from the point maybe an inch down was coaxed out of a rock that fell from where the stars were. Mouse supposed his friend was telling the truth; he'd offered 200 gold and a Forestling Knife in exchange, after all.
Two hundred would have made for a good month or two, Mouse smiled,
or one helluva weekend.
Mouse had worked his way down an alley and gotten past the foreigner now, and taken position in a dark alcove.
He's totally lost in his own world. Maybe a scholar? They're supposed to be absent-minded, snickered Mouse.
I'll be teaching him a lesson in a moment. He pulled the knife out and waited for the scholar to walk by, all the while holding his breath. A moment later, he struck, the knife easily slipping through the expensive-looking robe and into the heart underneath. This surprised Mouse not at all. On those fortunately uncommon times he'd had to fight his way out of a blown heist, the skymetal blade had shown that it could punch through steel armor as easily as it could slice cheese.
Even that Darneshhi cheese, the one with the chewy crust-like thing on it, that'd be tasty for dinner... maybe Scholar here will have a purse big enough. Hey, did it get warm all of a sud... Mouse's skeleton flared brightly, incinerating him from the inside-out as the skymetal blade turned a glowing white before it, too, disappeared from the searing heat.
Ow, that hurt, crossed the mind of the well-dressed mage.
More than it did the last time someone snuck up on me, come to think of it... magic blade, maybe? The damaged flesh does seem to be knitting back together a little slower than normal... well, no matter. Where was I? The mage continued his nightly stroll. He was sure S'nleen would berate him for not paying better attention to his surroundings, but when he got to thinking like that
...and what thoughts they were. Where does magic come from, anyway? Every wizard, spellcaster, parlor mage or farmer with a nasty disposition towards rats thought the question at least once in their lives,
but I might actually be able to find the answer.
The night's walk lasted a very long time.
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November 07, 2012
Inventory... Yay?
Inventory is over and done with. While we won't know the official numbers for about two weeks, preliminary reports are that it didn't suck.
My regular irregular blogginating will resume Thursday. More or less.
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November 06, 2012
A Major Milestone
While the American people go forth and vote for their choice of either a head of cabbage or a... head of cabbage, something truly important occurred today... to whit:
That's the DuckMobile's odometer at roughly 6pm this evening. A 1996 Toyota Camry with 111111 miles on it? Heck, I'm going to have to drive a stake through its engine block and bury it at a cloverleaf interchange to see it go away.
Okay everybody, go back to watching the news to see which head of cabbage wins.
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Posted by: GreyDuck at November 07, 2012 08:02 AM (xbP2x)
2
Heck, I'm going to have to drive a stake through its engine block and bury it at a cloverleaf interchange to see it go away.
It's a Toyota, it's got a long life still ahead of it--a boring life, perhaps, but a long one. If you're waiting for it to croak before buying a newer and/or more interesting car, you may be waiting for quite a while. OTOH, if you're happy with it, then I say hold onto it and save the money you'd otherwise spend on new car payments.
Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at November 07, 2012 07:00 PM (ElBzz)
3
Peter, the DuckMobile is mine for the long haul. She's been with me for 14 years and 81000 miles, and I'd like to get her to "classic car" status at least.
Posted by: Wonderduck at November 07, 2012 09:31 PM (lS5Cn)
4
If you haven't already seen it, check out the (YouTube) episode of Top Gear where they tested a small Toyota pickup. Since pickups aren't designed to be particularly fast, they ran a different series of tests than usual, to see how sturdy it was.
Summary:
very.
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at November 08, 2012 12:29 AM (XjJZF)
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Inventory! Yay!
We've got inventory at the Duck U Bookstore this afternoon and tomorrow. Yay?
You may not see me until Thursday.
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