The Lurker's Lair #33

[vometia]

I'm concerned about the bookcases I'm facing at present: cheap chipboard construction with cheap plastic plugs holding their shelves up. An entire Encyclopaedia Britannica with over a dozen yearbooks is less than half the weight they're supporting. Then again, they've lasted nearly 15 years without collapsing so far. What I should be more concerned about are the shelves behind me of even cheaper construction "made in Poland to the lowest possible standards" as the blurb doesn't say. They're responsible for holding up a similar amount of weight and are more liable to fall on me if they collapse which could cause a nasty injury, and more importantly they could pwn my nice NEC monitor, too. I keep meaning to replace them with shelves made of, y'know, actual wood but my 1337 skillz in assembling my own shelves or the more likely lack thereof is a moot point since it seems no bugger will deliver wood around here and I'd rather leave my days of attempting to fit impractically-shaped objects in our car behind me.

[vometia]

I hate delinquent crawler-bots. Those that are run by spammers and the like are just an irritating fact of life these days, but those operating as legit companies are especially annoying. I've long-since IP-blocked the likes of Cyveillance and Panscient from accessing my website for various forms of bad behaviour such as ignoring the robots.txt directive, apparently trying to break into bits they (rightly) don't have access to and perhaps worst of all, by downloading the entire site on a regular basis: this is something I regard as tantamount to theft since I pay for my bandwidth and their only purpose is their own business model - at least Google, Bling and the like give something back in terms of a publicly-useful search engine and are much more careful about not trashing people's transfer quotas.

I suppose I'm annoyed today because like a number of other disreputable companies, Panscient have wriggled out of my attempts to block them by acquiring a new address range (205.251.121.0/24 for the curious) so here they are again stealing my bandwidth and making my logfiles unreadable. What very irritating people they are.

Edit: and people who keep nicking my photos and stuff. I think I've been asked permission to use them on a grand total of two occasions (everything's marked copyright after all) but there's been literally dozens of attempts to deep-link, mostly from forums (but again, it's my bandwidth) but even to support people's personal pages which have ad revenue coming in which is especially annoying (and probably illegal if I were pedantic enough to follow it up). And they're just the ones I know about: people making their own copies are another matter entirely and I'll most likely never get to hear about it.

[vometia]

Actually did some cooking today. Had my eyes thoroughly assaulted by chopped onions, the rest of me assaulted with spitting oil from the wok but eventually ended up with coq au vin of sorts; I normally put chopped bacon in it for extra flavour but we didn't have any so I used Marmite instead. Not quite the same, but not bad either. We're doing quite badly in terms of food right now though, due to being too disorganised to keep the essentials like potatoes in stock so we ended up having peas, squash and ancient smelly mushrooms fried in butter to accompany it. (Er the mushrooms that is: the squash and peas were simmered. Dunno what fried peas would be like. Messy, probably.)

I haven't cooked in ages and I'm now knackered.

What do you mean, my kitchen exploits are dull? Well I won't tell you about the diced buffalo we're getting next week then!

[Jheuloh]

Spitting oil?

And maybe one day, when you have nothing better to do, you could brew some fried peas. For the sake of experimentation.

Edited November 22, 2010 by Jheuloh

[vometia]

Spitting oil?

Yeah, it does that when there's moisture in it, as there was with the chicken lumps. Lard would probably be better, but it's rather frowned on these days; anyway, I kind of... erm... what's the shallow-frying equivalent of parboiling? "Parfrying"? Anyway, that, before then simmering them in wine (only half submerged though! They go all chewy if they're totally covered in liquid) at which point the wok stopped gobbing oil at me, thankfully.

And maybe one day, when you have nothing better to do, you could brew some fried peas. For the sake of experimentation.

Ew. Actually there's a programme on the telly at present with a particularly useless pair of creatures, Giles Coren, normally a newspaper food critic, and Sue Perkins, a comedian and someone who's not as useless as Giles but still an expert at being inexpert at everything, where they've experimented with going back to the '70s self-sufficiency malarky (it involves knitted pullovers, lurid colours and goats - that's all anyone really needs to know), and peapod wine is one of the things they attempted to create. Much more alcoholic than regular wine at around 25% ABV, but it apparently tastes foul. I'm not entirely sure why I wrote "apparently" there because you don't really need to have tasted fermented peapods to know the result will be entirely horrid. It's worth watching if you want the amusement of two people celebrating their own ineptness!

[Si-Shen]

I avoid cooking at all costs ... mostly because I am the type of guy to grab 1lbs of hamburger, 1 box of Hamburger Helper and say "Dinner is ready!" LOL

I did enough cooking back when I worked for Wendy's and got enough burns and cuts to hold me over for a life time. Namely the unintentional and failed attempted to remove my thumb from my hand.

OH and Si beat AC Brotherhood!

In the end, you kill some people!

LOL

As for my bookshelf, I need another, I have a cheap store bought one thats got paperbacks double stacked and the hard covers are actually acting as supports so the shelves above dont buckle and collapse!

[WhoGuru]

*snicker* *chuckle* ... *guffaw* AHAHAHAHAHA

We just watched this earlier. Seriously, next time you're bored and need a rolling laugh, go watch this on Hulu! Holy crap it WALKS! and the acting is just stellar and OMG the special defects... Must see!

[InsanitySorrow]

Wow

[Nihternnes]

i never go visit my sister cause she lives http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=burmac+rd+and+dutch+ave+kansas&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=W+Dutch+Ave+%26+N+Burmac+Rd,+Alta,+KS&gl=us&ei=GH7sTMmbLoT6lwfln5mOAQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ8gEwAA

and i live in Haven and ill link that aswell http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=haven+kansas&vps=1&sll=38.144818,-97.66571&sspn=0.433091,0.891953&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Haven,+Reno,+Kansas

we are a bit far apart and i dont like driving to the boonies

[Glaedr]

*snicker* *chuckle* ... *guffaw* AHAHAHAHAHA

*snip*

We just watched this earlier. Seriously, next time you're bored and need a rolling laugh, go watch this on Hulu! Holy crap it WALKS! and the acting is just stellar and OMG the special defects... Must see!

that thing is so cool. I WANT ONE! T^T

[Si-Shen]

o.O that was strange Who...

[Jheuloh]

Coming soon, to a theater far away from you.

[InsanitySorrow]

GameStop is now starting Pre-Orders for DLC

http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/halo-reach/news/gamestop-wants-you-to-pre-order-dlc/a-2010112414749519046/g-2009060110582402047

[vometia]

As their part of the bargain, the publishers' guarantee that in exchange for early payment they'll do proper QA before release will make it all worthwhile. Er, they did something like say that, didn't they?

(Is it even legal to sell vapourware any longer...?)

Edit: I realise I've probably got the wrong end of the stick and that no money is likely to change hands until it's ready to "ship" as with other pre-orders, though that does rather reinforce the "erm, why?" feeling.

[InsanitySorrow]

Edit: I realise I've probably got the wrong end of the stick and that no money is likely to change hands until it's ready to "ship" as with other pre-orders, though that does rather reinforce the "erm, why?" feeling.

From the article it looks like GameStop wants you to put a full $10 before the DLC is released, in this case it's so you can get a bonus item as part of the DLC, for which you have to sign up to their point scheme. I don't think this'll help QA at all

[vometia]

From the article it looks like GameStop wants you to put a full $10 before the DLC is released, in this case it's so you can get a bonus item as part of the DLC, for which you have to sign up to their point scheme. I don't think this'll help QA at all

I was joking about the QA, but putting money down on something that doesn't yet exist is a bit... I dunno. And I have a bit of a jaded view of these bonus items anyway since they're often just one or two in-game items that were probably culled from the original game.

[InsanitySorrow]

Yeah I know you were

90% of the time they are items cut from the game and after a month or so of the DLC/Game being released, these bonuses get released as well, so to be honest it doesn't seem worth the effort of pre-ordering.

I don't understand why you'd want to pre-order DLC, once uploaded/released it's always gonna be there, there aren't any stock shortages ect to worry about.

[vometia]

I don't understand why you'd want to pre-order DLC, once uploaded/released it's always gonna be there, there aren't any stock shortages ect to worry about.

Erm... maybe it's the upcoming electron drought. No, Dutch electron disease, that's it! So there really won't be enough to go round. Possibly.

[Si-Shen]

DLC pre-orders? really? how about I stick to the grabbing it right from the Devs/Publishers (like ME2 and DA DLC).

I pre-order enough from EB, I dont need to worry about signing up for all sorts of extra programs I wont give a damn about.

[Cheeka]

Well I've had a very odd week, on Tuesday cat number two was admitted to hospital, then cat number one was showing the same symptoms so straight to the vet for him, had to take him in again today but she thinks its only his teeth so the few he has left are gonna have to go. Then on Thursday morning at 0650 my electricty went out on the coldest day we've had this winter, called it in and was told it would be 2-8 hours, well needless to say it didn't go that way. The temp was getting down to -5 and with no heat that aint no picnic, and it turns out they dont have to give you anything to keep warm so they don't. The next morning when the builders that are building across the road form me found out we had had no heat for over 36 hours they gave us Calor Gas heaters ( it was only the four houses on my street that had no power ) and I cant tell you how good it was to be warm again, and they said if we ran out of gas they would get us a refill. The power came on at about 1800, never been so glad to have power in my life. And now its snowing, I have to take my sister and her husband to the funeral service on Tuesday and they live in the country, I love my VW but I am not driving on those roads in the snow, I'll end up in a field after going thro' a hedge like my sister did last year. So no idea how to get them to the service. God I'll be glad when Wednesday come's.

[Si-Shen]

-5 isnt that bad... not great but not bad.

I dont get how it would take so long for your power to be restored if its only a couple houses.

[Cheeka]

The builders had to lay the road in a hurry because of the school so there was a few feet of concrete that was very compact and they couldn't get thru', they also had a hard time finding where the falt was.

[Si-Shen]

sounds odd to me, course most power lines where I live or have ever lift are above ground excpet in a FEW areas.

Makes things like the Ice Storm of 98 more interesting "Oh is that a power line that wants to play with the top of my car?"

[Cheeka]

They are all underground here and because the builders did it and not the electric company it was not in an easy to get to place.

[Si-Shen]

Thats just strange, but then again, here hydro lines are the job of Hydro One (or the local Hydro company), builders just wire houses and poles are always cheaper in the long run for them here.