phik

Best of Penny-Arcade: Xbox installation instructions. Step 1: open outer box. Step 2: throw away the included controller

I got my second day in traffic court today, and I took Joe “Victory Breakfast” Shaw and Chris “Aviation Meteorologist” Blizzard along for moral support.

The judge listened patiently to my well-reasoned and -documented arguments, took the time to read almost everything I handed him, and asked some reasonable questions. Then he took the time to patiently explain his logic and the appeals process — carefully avoiding any mention of my core argument — and ruled against me.

Our theory about this gross miscarriage of justice is that he was not at all interested in addressing the issue of whether the majority of speed limits in Boston, and indeed the entire Commonwealth, are likely posted illegally, and punted me to the appeals court. In case I chose to appeal, he was very careful to explain his reasons for rejecting my other smaller, and fundamentally less interesting arguments. But he didn’t go anywhere near the core of my defence.

The next step in the process is to petition the District Court Appellate Division to reverse the ruling on the basis of an error in law. If they agree to hear the case, the Commonwealth and I can submit briefs and (upon apparently-rare request) go for oral argument, after which a three-judge appelate panel will rule.

I took all of this to a lawyer who specializes in traffic law, who told me that he had never seen this appeals form before, and had never heard of a traffic case going to appellate court. This led me to the conclusion that he was either not a very good lawyer, or such a good lawyer that he won all of his cases before they got that far. I’m honestly not sure which one is more likely. He did have a very nice office, and didn’t charge me for the visit, so he’s probably not hard up for clients.

This is all actually pretty cool, and, win or lose, an experience that I’m glad to have had. But I wish the judge could have weaseled his way out of it without it costing me an extra non-refundable $180 to file an appeal.

That’s right — even if I convince the panel that the speed limit is illegal, and that I never should have been here in the first place, they keep my $180. Get there, justice.

BoPA: This is funny partially because it looks like Joey after a long night of drinking and threatening his friends with scissors, and partially because the archive is broken and you have to know it’s there.

The New England winter, with its multiple freeze/thaw cycles per week, is taking its toll on the Boston roads. I encountered at least five potholes on the way to Jacob’s. One of them was large enough that I actually drove into and out of it as two distinct phases. I had to be rescued from another by a helicopter. I narrowly dodged a sixth, after I saw it swallow whole a postal service van.

At some point during the odyssey, I lost one of my hub caps and broke one of the steel belts in one of the tires. Sigh.

BoPA: The punch line isn’t very good, and I’m not that fond of the drawing style, but here we are.

As everyone else is no doubt writing as we speak, we received a brief smattering of snow, not at all reminiscent of my youth. At first I decided to battle nature, keep up with the elements, shovel every hour on the hour until God gives up and declares me the victor. After about five such scheduled shovelings, I went to bed. And although you could argue that it was pointless, there were seven fewer inches of snow on my front walk than my non-shoveling-all-night neighbours. Then someone came by with a snowblower and cleared a foot-wide path for me.

Grab a snickers (redux)

BoPA: This is another gem hidden from unobstructed view, because the archive page for that day has the wrong image ref. I can’t decide whether I think that maybe Nintendo wants it that way, or whether I think it’s an innocent mistake.

I got to see an Oscar statue today, and I thought you might care. I get the impression that you could do some pretty serious damage to the average skull with one. They do not look in any way flimsy.

Then I went to San Jose for what seemed like 20 minutes. I guess it was like a day, but my schedule was so insane that I was never home when Miranda was awake, and I saw almost none of Chris and Patrice, so it’s almost as if I weren’t even there.

I filed my appeal today! We are one step further down the path to the point where I stop talking about this.

BoPA: The excellent comic is matched by an equally excellent diatribe regarding Galactic Civilizations, the message of which I can affirm most solemnly.

However, in recognition of the fact that with respect to any form of popular culture I insist on living not fewer than four months in the past, we will speak today of Katamari Damacy. You’re welcome to excuse yourself if you’ve already been through this.

While I share his general indifference for the multiplayer mode, the single player “campaign” is the killer app that the PlayStation has never had. I’m just going to roll the ball around for a few minutes while I wait for my pasta to cook, then suddenly it’s Thursday, I haven’t eaten in three days, and there is some cat throw up that needs attended to.

This game alone — if you can still find it, for its sleeper cult popularity has made it exceedingly scarce — justifies the purchase of a PS2 should you not already own one. Despite the fact that this would then effectively be a $120 game, do not let this spectre deter you.

And the soundtrack, lord. Buy it, steal it, I don’t care, but get your hands on it without any further delay.

BoPA: End of the Month Edition

Boy do I have a treat for all you JSB fans out there. Jacob found an orphaned page on the JSB site that seemed to indicate the existence of some taped live shows. One thing led to another, and we simultaneously unearthed this vast treasure trove of biblical proportions. They have so many songs, it’s unreal!

Jacob is going to convert the early shows for me, which are only available in some unbelievably annoying pretentious-audiophile format. It’s going to take a long time to listen to all of these.

Regular Best-of-Penny-Arcade readers will recognize Frank from earlier … later strips. Comics which wioll haven be excellent, if you’re believe Dr. Streetmentioner. Anyways.

For as much time as I’ve spent in Canada, and the west coast of the United States, it’s almost impossible to believe that I’ve never been to Vancounver until now. But here we are.

I had so much work to do before I left that I barely slept before our ridiculously early flight. Jacob’s account is not entirely inaccurate. In fact, it’s not inaccurate at all.

One of our flight attendants was extremely panicked about her iPod. We think the songs are still there, but there is something about that disk that’s completely rogered. She could almost certainly recover her data, but for a price that she’s probably unwilling to pay, from some special data recovery service. We did what we could, which was not much.

At least one other flight attendant came by and begged us, when she wasn’t imploring us, not to tell her co-worker the awful truth that her data is lost. They felt that the iPod Troubles, as they came to be called, were distracting her overmuch from her duties, which did not, at this early hour, include getting us drunk.

She was telling us about how she just bought a big plasma screen TV, and now her iPod dies. I don’t understand how, as a United flight attendant of all professions, you don’t see the train barrelling down on you. All I’m saying is that I would not, if I were her, be making any large purchases on credit.

We’re going to go have seafood now. I have high hopes, fueled by years of my Canadian friends talking up Vancouver as second only perhaps to Newfoundland in terms of seafood quality as measured on some sort of numeric scale.

BoPA: This is funny on so many levels.

The show, it must — and now will be — said, was outstanding.

Unlike Jacob, who feels he can just take off work and fly someplace to see a show whenever he wishes, this is the first time I’ve seen them since our accidental discovery in Canmore.

I took a bunch of pictures. Mostly of Craig, because he was the only one that was lit at all. I hope you like grainy ISO 1600!

whenever I think of the e-bow, it reminds me of the e-dork episode of ATHF

my name is craig

even at ISO 1600 it was really hard to get a picture of the badly-lit Aaron

he broke a lot of strings that night; we saw a lot of this “backup guitar”

It turns out we’re staying across the hall from the band. This can hardly be called a surprise, given that I booked a room in the hotel above the venue.

Note here how the crisp, clean taste of Lymon quenches completely.

Today marks my triumphant return to that American city with the saltiest of lakes. Devoted readers will remember my previous, and only, visit to Salt Lake City; my learning experience involving a Boeing 757, an incompetent ground crew, and an exploding lavatory.

This time I’m not here because of a lavatory, no, I came on purpose. We’re holding the Lustre users group meeting here, which promises to be either an exceptionally good or tortuously bad two days. I know which one my money is on, but as with all things there can be said to be some element of chance.

I’ve been having more plane crash dreams than usual, lately. They are remarkably infrequent, on average.

zelda!! more like celda

Jeff and I were driving through Seattle on the way to our meeting this morning, when he got a call from his sister.

After the usual small-talk, he mentioned that he ran into Benecio Del Toro in the airport. He was so distracted, first by the shock of learning that his fully-grown sister didn’t know who that is, and then the involved discussion trying to explain it, that he clipped a blind person in a zebra crossing.

After the meeting I returned home on the red eye via LA, and it must be said, the approach from the north over LA at night is pretty intense. Bill Belichick sat right behind me on the LAX to BOS leg. Despite my years as a tortured Browns fan, including the years under his noble tenure, I resisted the urge to strike up a conversation with the newly-re-crowned Super Bowl champion about how great Bernie Kosar is.

Fun fact: Belichick does, in fact, know how to dress himself like a normal human, when he’s not in a soaking wet hoody on the sidelines.

We have a laser now.

I had intended to sleep on the plane back to Boston, but I was distracted into watching Oceans 12 instead. Sort of. The screen is a bit small, but it’s not a very cerebral or visually intricate motion picture, so I think I’m getting most of it.

After using emacs for so many years, I find that I can use it with remarkable speed and accuracy, key combinations burned into muscle memory, even blind drunk. Scotch scotch scotch.

On every plane I see people looking with naked, slavering lust at my PowerBook. The Cult of Mac has taken over even the Windows users, at least in spirit. It’s probably been this way for years, and I’m just more sensitive to it now.

If we’d had this BoPA when I worked at Zero-Knowledge, it would have been on everyone’s office windows, like a cool kids’ Dilbert.

I don’t know why, but Jacob and I are completely incapable of arriving rested for an evening with Jimmy Swift.

This time I’m coming in from across the country to arrive mere hours before my next flight departs, and Jacob stayed up late drinking and partying in C-town. Last night is the last time they’re ever going to play Thin Ice, because they don’t plan on teaching the new drummer. It breaks my heart.

Tonight’s set was a rocker, all 45 minutes of it. But it’s OK, because 3 of the other 5 bands were actually really good. I have some new listening to do when I return home, on the off chance that I can even find any such materials recorded in any format anywhere in the world. I gather that some of these bands were hastily assembled from a mixture of people from local bus stops and spare automobile parts just after lunch.

We were both pretty tired — I can certainly vouch for my own state of fatigue, in a volume of prose stretching on to the horizon if necessary — but forces beyond ourselves compelled us to make the most of our Halifax experience through a thorough brand of after-concert partying. I’m kidding, it wasn’t very thorough, as parties go, but it was conversationally superlative.

Seriously, though, I need to sleep at some point. I’m dying.

This has become a modern-day classic; a staple in our expanding lexicon.

Jacob really put his foot in it. Like that time that I was flying with Joe to Ottawa, and I was reading the paper on the plane on the way, some really engrossing, in-depth story about the problems in Quebec. So when I got to immigration I spaced and told them that we were on our way to Quebec, which didn’t precisely jive with what Joe said at the same time. It was OK, we explained; we weren’t trying to lie, just doing our best as under-age drunks. Considering that I think I was still under 18, I’m amazed they even let me cross the border without some notarized communique from my parents. Good times.

Anyways, I don’t think it helped that I recognized one of the customs officers who came out to meet us on the tarmac. I don’t know that he recognized me, of course, I just assume that these guys have photographic memories, and he didn’t like how often I was invading his country. Also, he didn’t like the shape my passport is in, given that it has de-laminated to the point that you can basically remove and re-insert the photograph.

After about an hour and a half on the tarmac — I am not making this up — including separate interviews and background checks, they decided to let us into their country, explained that they had convinced themselves satisfactorily that we were in fact US citizens, and advised us to get new passports without removable photographs. I have had more close calls with Canadian immigration than most people would believe. To their credit, if I’d been in any of these situations in a US airport, I’d have been sent back to my country of origin with much less patience than is demonstrated by the Canadian authorities.

Deb, Rob, and Blizzard decided to stay at home like boring married people, so they missed what is probably the best rendition of Warm & Fuzzy Feeling that has ever reached mortal ears. As you’ll discover when you listen to the recordings, they decided to “re-work” (butcher) some of their songs. The new Daisy is starting to grow on me, actually, but the new Bumps in the Road is to be eschewed.

(Is that an acceptable use of eschewed?)

Another Best of Penny Arcade in which we employ physical humour.

Last night’s show was probably the best we’ve ever seen live. It may have been matched in some ways by the original Canmore show, but I was too busy having my mind blown to really retain the details in sharp focus.

Tonight’s entry was no slouch, and included refined versions of the newly-released offerings.

I am not currently at liberty to discuss our post-event festivities, but I am permitted to reveal that they included a pair of sunglasses, Talking Heads, a sign advertising $1.99 video rentals, and a psychedelically decorated breakfast restaurant.

The direction in this episode is excellent.

Yikes. As in the very recent past, we did not do a very good job of geting any sleep. After stumbling in from breakfast around 8 or 8h30, I was just barely self-aware enough to look up the hotel checkout time. Ugh.

So we got up at 10h30, learned that the hotel was going to hold our feet to the fire about the 11h checkout time, and stumbled around the city until Chris was sure enough about the weather to depart.

The flight back was uneventful, and included some strangely beautiful cloud formations, particularly over what passes for “mountains” in this part of the country. Upon our wet and frozen arrival, there was a customary customs and immigration examination, but he seemed like he was just going through the motions. Maybe the Canadians radioed down and told him to cut us a break after our excitement two days ago.

peace for real though

There’s a bee, hornet, yellowjacket, wasp, whatever, outside my house, but it’s the size of an average human man. It’s very distracting, because it keeps crashing into the window, shaking the whole house, threatening to rip it off the foundation. Before I opened the blinds and caught a look at the enormous man-wasp-beast, I was terrified that I’d find someone driving a Volkswagen bus into the side of my house, over and over again. I’m not going outside until the September snow starts falling, but god help me if it manages to break through the window and devour my head in just a single bite. At least it will be quick.

I found a bug in my washing machine today. If you interrupt the cycle by pressing in the knob at just the right time, just after the final spin but before it’s finished spinning down, then the door never unlocks. I had to set it back to a minute before the end of the cycle and let it complete “for real” before it would unlock.

Those wacky state machines!

I figure that one of these days shaver and I will start a game company, and they’ll end up writing a comic like this about me soon thereafter.

We haven’t talked seriously about showers in about 5 years, so we are truly past-due.

Say what you will about my house — and there are several things that I would change, budgetary considerations aside — the shower is not at all one of them. It lacks the sheer pressure associated with my former shower, making it somewhat more pedestrian in that regard. Still, most people would view this as an improvement, if they didn’t go to school in Ohio next to an overachieving municipal water pumping facility. In any case, its pressure is more than adequate.

Its shower head is as close to perfectly positioned as it may be possible to achieve through purely mortal means. Not as in most Asian countries, where the shower head juts from the wall just below my shoulder blades, which is great for practicing the limbo while washing one’s hair, but not otherwise ideal. That’s my tip for the Asian tourism and business development organizations: raise the shower heads for taller Westerners.

The water temperature selector is one of the radial models, so it’s easy to set perfectly and consistently, every time. Much more importantly, once you’ve found the desired temperature, it doesn’t change. There’s no surer way to ruin a shower than for the temperature to oscillate between freezing and scalding every 35 seconds.

I’m glad we had this little discussion.

Really, though, The Sims is a really weird phenomenon. I think I’m glad I never played it.

Somehow I managed to get into my iCal the wrong flight time1. So instead of getting to the airport just in time to argue my way onto a flight that leaves in 30 minutes, I arrived just in time to hear that the door is now closing and that I am long past the argument phase. Fiddlesticks.

One very real perk of flying consistently on a major airline is the unbelievable route selection that this usually affords you. My flight to Dulles and connection to Columbus would have me landing at 10h30. But if I take this flight to Chicago an hour later, and make an illegal 25-minute connection, I can get there at 11h!

I don’t believe in checking luggage, so making it to the plane in 25 minutes was no problem at all. We landed 15 minutes early and I made the rest up in the rental car office and on the highway. I arrived right on time for my meeting; a perfect travel recovery, after starting off so very badly.

1 As a result of this incident, I have reviewed my personal travel process. Readiness level TRAVELCON 2 now includes as part of standard operating procedures a final confirmation of flight and airport transportation times.

I almost certainly already linked to this during my Katamari Phase, but it deserves a second airing.

My sisters graduated today. I have just a few constructive criticisms for the students and staff of Copley High School and the Copley-Fairlawn Board of Education:

• learn how to light the stage; even at ISO 1600 with my 300mm zoom lens, it was virtually impossible to get a good shot
• you need much better speechwriting. Not just from the students, from whom you might not expect such early speechwriting talent. But the superintendent, good lord, what a rambler.

I’ve been away from home for about six years now, and something odd happened between me and my twin sisters; I grew slowly apart from one, and rather closer to the other. It just happened. I don’t think I even talked to one of them more than the other.

Anyways, my sister Lucy is really quite special, something that is slowly dawning on me. It’s hard not to think of them as when I last lived at home, when they were twelve, but she’s much more capable and mature than I’ve previously given her credit for.

My RSS reader showed me the header for the dinosaur comic things to do while waiting in an airport while I was waiting in the Akron airport.

But I couldn’t fetch the comic itself, because I was waiting in the part of this airport which doesn’t have wireless access. Cosmic.

Just a week ago, I was telling Jacob that jwz really should just cork it and buy a Mac. I was admonished not to voice this opinion around Jamie, lest he attack me with a mannequin or otherwise maul me in some vaguely fetishist fashion.

I wonder how long before he starts to hate his Mac.

For the longest time, I thought Tycho was making a little fake moustache with his finger in frame two. You know, to make the story more mysterious.

If you were to teleport me into any random airport boarding area, anywhere in the United States or Canada, I could immediately tell if it belonged to a Lufthansa flight. Lufthansa to Frankfurt is the gateway for most people traveling between the US and Africa, India, or the Middle East. It will happen to some degree with most flights, but only for Lufthansa does everyone completely disregard — willfully or owing to poor local language skills — the announcements indicating who should now board the aircraft.

So there are 400 people trying to jam into two narrow lines, and when the agent tells someone that it’s not her turn, she just stands there so that nobody can get past. The agents don’t really do anything to try to alleviate this situation, they just laugh at the carnage and watch while we prepare to depart more and more behind schedule. This has happened on every Lufthansa flight that I’ve ever taken, originating anywhere in the US or Canada. Good times.

I used one of my bountiful United system-wide upgrade certs on this flight, and call me snooty, but I am now officially not a fan of the Airbus A340.

Keep in mind that my only comparable experience has been on United’s 747-400 fleet, so it’s not like I’m comparing Lufthansa’s configuration to one of those year-after-year award-winning airlines, like Cathay or Singapore.

The seats are way too close together. Not only do the people in window seats have to engage in complicated gymnastics routines to reach the aisle without disturbing the person sitting next to them — which may not, in fact, be possible without engaging in accidental intercourse with the person you’re climbing over — but you can’t even extend the bottom half of your seat all the way. If you’re taller than about 5′8″, your feet will hit the fully-reclined person in front of you.

I have a seat in row 15, and to my unbelievable surprise, the bulkhead doesn’t allow it to recline fully either. As someone who used an upgrade for this seat, I’m probably in no great position to complain. If I were one of the people who had paid upwards of four thousand dollars each way for this seat, however, mere words would not suffice to describe my rage.

Fortunately, Lufthansa operates three different configurations of international A340, without any way to distinguish between them in advance, so good luck if you want to avoid the bulkhead row.

United’s steak is fine — sometimes really good! — but order whatever else Lufthansa has to offer. Dried pasta, German lawn weeds, fried carpet, anything but the steak. And bring your own earplugs.

The service is excellent. I have nothing snarky whatsoever to say about the service.

Scotch scotch scotch.