The Flow of Consciousness

I had dinner a few nights ago at a local upper-class restaurant with a female friend. She and I were both dressed nicely and were very cordial and polite to each other throughout the evening. We enjoyed ourselves, talking about our lives and our Easter vacation and laughing at few inside jokes that needed no verbal cues. We weren’t making lovey-dovey eyes at each other or anything else that would indicate that we were together because, well, we’re not.

Our hostess was very attractive, and certainly appeared to be my type (don’t ask me what my type is unless you’re prepared for a diatribe). She walked by a lot because she was apparently also tasked with helping busboys and wait staff clean tables.

I wasn’t staring at her—I don’t stare. I was caught staring too many times in high school, mostly at my girlfriend, but before that, at random attractive girl of the hour. It was never a creepy stare—I’m no creepster. I was generally intrigued with what they were thinking about the current speaker. Anyway, I learned my lesson and now I keep my attention focused on the person to whom I’m supposed listening.

One time, she walked by and kinda smiled at me. I thought, “Hooray! I’ve either made an impression or she’s just being nice.” It was probably the latter, but the former makes me feel better, so I’ll go with that. I politely smiled back, and, out of the corner of my eye, saw another waitress roll her eyes at me!

A part of me wanted to walk to her and say, “I’m not a dirtbag, honey. I’m single. This gal and I are just friends. What’s the hostess’s name?”

I’ve finally got around to writing about Pittco‘s Iron Storm 6, held March 17-18, 2007.

It was a great event—one of Pittco‘s best parties (it’s held seven) yet.

Ask someone else about the CS tournament. I choose to ignore it.

The UT2k4 tournament was insane. More than 60 people signed up for it, so Obsidian had to hold free-for-all deathmatches in order to chop the field down to a bracket-able size. I, of course, shield cannon’d my way through the entire FFA, but ended up getting second to last in my server. I held fourth or fifth place (fourth was the lowest place to go onto the 1v1) for the first 10 minutes of the fifteen minute round, but others just kept on truckin’. The craziest thing is that, on another server, the first place player had more than 50 kills on top of the second place player—and it’s wasn’t perfecti0n, the guy who usually wins all of Pittco’s UT deathmatch tournaments.

I organized the BF2 tournament. It was kinda rocky, but there was a definite winner. We had three teams signed up, then one team lost at CS and left the LAN (argh). We played FuShe Pass and Dragon Valley, both on 16-player mode. I had a lot of fun organizing it, as well as playing in it.

We had a lot of prizes to give out. Ultra was a big sponsor. I’m pleased with their products, and actually use two of their cases and two of their power supplies.

IS 7 planning is already underway, and it’s going to be another good one. We’re getting even more organized, and that can only mean a better experience for both attendees and staff.

There’s been a lot of buzz about Sunday’s Battlestar Galactica episode, "Crossroads, part 2." You can catch a summary at Bureau42 when its editors post their review (I tend to agree with their sentiments).

WARNING: SPOILERS, yo.

My only displeasure with the episode comes from its lack of surprise, other than one surprise which I’ll mention later in this post. Everything else was quite predictable. We knew that Gaius would get off the hook somehow. We knew that the strange music that only three people seemed to hear was probably Cylonic.

I really liked Lee’s monologue. I rate it up there with Jack Nicholson’s from A Few Good Men and Keanu Reeves’ from Johnny Mnemonic. I’d love to read a transcription of it and see if—and how—it relates to any modern-day situation. It was powerful and well delivered. Frak, it took up the better part of a segment between commercials, iirc.

I had theories on who the final five Cylons were, too. The music thing made it pretty easy to tell, as did the actions in Crossroads, Part 1 of the characters who heard it. So, now we know the final five: Starbuck, Tigh, Chief Tyrol, Anders, and Tory (President Roslin’s aide).

It was fairly obvious after Crossroads, Part 1 that Starbuck was. The scene in which Anders, Tigh, and Tory are all in the bar during Crossroads, Part 1 gave them away, especially when Roslin chides Tory for slacking the past few days and when Caprica Six freaks out Tigh by telling him things that no one else could have known. I don’t think there was a supporting scene for Anders until Crossroads, Part 2 when Anders and Tory were just about to get it on.

Chief was the surprise—a big surprise…to me, at least. However, it’s not so much the fact that he’s a Cylon that intrigues me, but more the implications of his being a Cylon. This means that his and Cally’s child is half-Cylon, just like Hera. This also means that the Cylons not only understand human females’ gestation, but also the role human males play in it.

Perhaps Tyrol and Boomer were supposed to conceive a Cylon child, but when Boomer was shot, that became impossible because the Cylons didn’t have a way to get Boomer back to Galactica. Also, perhaps Anders and Starbuck were supposed to conceive, too, but Starbuck proved too wild/uncontrollable for Anders to handle. Then, something clicked in Anders and Tory and, suddenly, they were trying to conceive.

Tigh confounds some of this. Admiral Adama has known him for forty years. That means that the Cylons implemented the human aging process in his model. Forty years puts Tigh’s creation date during or shortly after the first Cylon war, which makes sense. Here’s another thought to consider: was Ellen a Cylon, too?

There were some people who were suggested to be Cylons. Balter was the obvious one, but it remains to be seen how he’s tied into it. A friend suggested Dualla, but her sickness in an earlier episode indicated that she was not, or Sharon would have gotten it, too.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Rob Owen talked to producer Ron Moore, who revealed some other tidbits, as well as confirmed my thought that Tigh was inserted into human society as an adult.

The worst part of the episode? Having to wait until 2008 to see more Battlestar

Mi deziras ke mi donus tutaj miaj unuoj…
…kiel eble plej oferti al vi estas tutaj miaj lastoj.

maddog Hall sent to me today a picture of himself and I at Ohio Linuxfest on September 30, 2006.

maddog gave an absolutely riveting closing talk at the event. He is one of my inspirations and can only hope that I may be one day even a quarter as awesome as he is.

Photo hosting courtesy of Zooomr and its awesome OpenID login system

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen the Battlestar Galactica episode “Maelstrom” yet, don’t read this. Actually, it might be too late ’cause you’ve already read the title.

I’m not sure how I feel about the apparent death of Captain Kara “Starbuck” Thrace in the most recent Battlestar Galactica episode, “Maelstrom.”

I understand it: she’s been trained to be a warrior, and her inner self was afraid of death, a fear which kept her alive. After “seeing” the death of her mother, she’s no longer afraid of death, and thus has nothing to keep her alive. Lee Adama won’t leave Dee, and Sam is too whipped to tell Starbuck what he really feels.

However, I thought the writers were going somewhere with the design thing—the design which Starbuck had been drawing since her youth and which had been found on the temple a few episodes prior. Maybe they plan for Helo to pick up the investigation into that, since he now knows that Starbuck is somehow connected.

The thing about this, though, is that Starbuck denied the existence of destiny—she believed that she was in control of her life. If the writers intended the design story element going, they would have had to explain why Starbuck knew the design and why she seemed to be the only one who knows anything about it.

I desire to consider more on her death, though. You’d figure that a character as loved as Starbuck would go out in a blaze of glory or saving someone, like Racetrack. This is puzzling, then. Rather than that, her death was almost cathartic: she burned out, realized the error, and died.

It will be interesting to see next week’s episode and if her apparent death is mentioned at all. It wasn’t mentioned in the preview at the end of tonight’s episode, leading me to believe that Starbuck really is dead and no one’s going to care (sad).

Farewell, Starbuck, you will be missed.

Zack asked:

If people who work in an office are anything like a Linux distribution, what personality traits would they have?

I answered.

I love sushi.

I love cheap sushi.

I love Giant Eagle sushi.

Giant Eagle sells rolls (maki-zushi) for about five dollars per dozen and filets (nigiri-zushi) for about ten dollars. I prefer the rolls, but for no reason other than cost. They’re tasty and make for a decent meal, especially when you’ve eaten lightly during the day (I find sushi to be fairly filling, but I may be weird like that).

I’m not a big fan of the Harry Potter books—I’m saving them for when I’ve got kids and I need bedtime stories or car-ride attention-keepers. I do enjoy the movies, however, and find a lot of coolness in them, especially any scene where they’re playing Quidditch.

The seventh book will be coming out July 21, 2007. If you’re a fan of the books, you should buy them through Amazon.com and earn me a little revenue for having referred you to them for it.

Standard Edition
Deluxe Edition

Did you know that by going to chrome://browser/content/browser.xul, you can essentially open a browser window within a browser window? It’s great fun.

Check it check it!