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TFW you and a few of your Raider buddies crack open a Vault door and find yourself facing two guys in power armor with miniguns...

and as the barrels spin up, you have just enough time to think, "This was a bad plan."

(Fortunately, as the Vault Overseer, I'm the one who's arranging this "warm reception". Raiders and Ghouls don't make it past the front door, and even Deathclaws only get to rampage through the top two floors before massed fire brings them down. And then everyone in those rooms gets a stimpak, on the house, to bring them back up to full health.)

The oscillating tone in old-style (that is, mid-20th century) electronic organs - which, wiki informs me, is produced by a rotating cylinder or "tonewheel" next to an electric pickup - has always made me think of water gurgling through pipes. Even though the processes, obviously, have nothing in common.

Current Mood: contemplative

Hey,

gridlore! Guess what site is still up?

Increase population http://crashlanding.myminicity.com
Increase industry http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/ind
Improve the transport network http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/tra
Increase security http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/sec
Improve environment http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/env
Increase business http://crashlanding.myminicity.com/com

I went and bolded the links that could use clicks. Still once per day.

Current Mood: nostalgic

What Fanfic Writers Are Like

Readers: We'd really like an update.
Writers: Yeah, me too.

-- fialleril at tumblr

Current Mood: creative

seen elsewhere:

Trump's "VOICE" Hotline set up for people to report on crime from illegal aliens was apparently overloaded with calls about space aliens.

Current Mood: amused

According to the email I just got, LJ is officially 18 years old.
Rather ironic timing for that milestone.
Of course, there's no mention in the official animated infographic of how many people have left, copied and/or deleted their accounts in the last month.

The cake looks pretty good - white/pale yellow, with cherries on top and cherry icing/jam between the layers.
Can't say I care for Frank's current, grey-hoodie-wearing incarnation, though. (Very Russian look, maybe.)

At least they gave me some hard numbers for my account, some of which would be a pain to gather myself:
14 years, 10 months, 2 days. (So, yeah, almost 15 years.)
1939 posts. (There's a lovely date, er, number.)
22.5 thousand comments made; 4515 received.

And now it's over.

Current Mood: nostalgic

Watch on YouTube

Hell yes I cried.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: John Williams - Princess Leia's Theme

Among the old things I'm going through (and sorting, reorganizing, and/or tossing out) right now are my old cassette tapes (a format I clung to long after many had switched to CDs). There are some commercial albums in the bunch, but a lot are classic mix tapes, recorded off the radio or, in some cases, from movies and TV (in an early form of "format shifting"). Now that I have mp3s, of course, most of these are superfluous except as artifacts of my past... and, if I must be honest, I have plenty of those without hanging on to an obsolete audio format.

Which is not to say I'm chucking all of them out. A few are not really replaceable - like the one that preserves not only the first Garfield TV special ("Here Comes Garfield"), but also my brother's and my reactions to it. Then there's the tapes which were made and given to me by friends; even if I have most of the songs on them, my favorites, it's not quite the same. There's even one with bits of the soundtracks to the Urusei Yatsura movies, from the very beginnings of my own anime fandom; even though I have clean copies of the music tracks now, thanks to the "Complete Music Box" set, I'm gonna keep this one around just a little longer to guide me in acquiring digital copies of the same clips/segments, including dialogue and SFX.

Current Mood: nostalgic

Power was out all over town today, as a result of last night's storm - I listened to the wind whistling before I went to bed. Mine finally came back at about 4:15; before that, I passed the time by finally completing the task (without distractions) of re-organizing and re-packing some storage boxes: stuff from my childhood, high school and college, greeting cards from over the years, etc. One of these items was a journal I started on the eve of my HS graduation, thirty years ago, filling perhaps a fifth of the book before putting it aside; I'm pleased to say I've managed to keep this effort going much longer, even if the entries have sometimes been just as sporadic.

And then, when the power did come back in the afternoon, I did what I'd intended to do when I first got up: go to the website of my Star Trek Online fleet and let them know I was leaving. I really need to focus on other things in my life right now, and most of the people I used to play with there are already gone; I don't really fit in with the new bunch, so it was time for me to get out of their way and let them do their own thing.

It's something I've been meaning to do since before this latest thing with LJ. It always hurts a bit to close a book or a door... but I'm confident that, in both cases, it's the right decision.

Current Mood: accomplished

After fifteen years, I'm finally done with LiveJournal. While I'm not directly affected by the new terms of service, enough is enough.

I imported all of my old entries (and comments) long ago; I refreshed it today. The only practical difference is that I've turned off auto-crossposting. I won't be deleting my LJ account, but I won't be making any new posts there either.

I miss Frank the Goat.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: R.E.M. - It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Made this account back in June 2002, so just shy of 15 years. Not a bad run. But - as I've become ever more keenly aware during those years - all things end. And for me, at least, the new user agreement is the last proverbial straw.

It's tempting to look back on all the things that have changed in that time, but that would take much too long, and probably get way too personal and maudlin... and anyway, this is no longer the place for it. It would also be redundant; let the entries themselves serve as chronicle.

Most of my recent entries have been made on dreamwidth and auto-crossposted, but I'm making this one the old-fashioned way, via LJ's own post page. I won't be crossposting from now on, but I won't be deleting this journal, either. To any who follow me, and see this, come find me over there. It's all there already, and I'll be making a final offline backup as well.

Dasvidaniya.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

(I went looking for this back in 2015, but couldn't find it at the time. Better late than never, I guess.)

The following timeline is based on a marathon viewing of the entire Back to the Future trilogy. Some departure/arrival times are necessarily approximate. Red times indicate departures, blue arrivals. Important dates/times are bolded.

I	Sat	Oct 26	1985	01:20	Einstein is first time traveler
				01:34	Libyans!
	Sat	Nov 05	1955	06:00?	Arrival in barn
	Sat	Nov 12	1955	22:04	Lightning strikes clock tower
	Sat	Oct 26	1985	01:24	Twin, er, Lone Pine Mall

II	Sat	Oct 26	1985	10:35?	"We don't need... roads."
	Wed	Oct 21	2015	16:29	Mill Valley, the future
				21:00?	Everything's fixed now, right?
	Sat	Oct 26	1985a	21:00?	Near miss by jet
	Sun	Oct 27	1985a	01:00?	A quick exit from Biff's Casino
	Sat	Nov 12	1955	06:00	Back from the future

III	Sun	Nov 13	1955	08:00?	Drive-in
	Wed	Sep 02	1885	08:00?	Indians!
	Mon	Sep 07	1885	08:15?	Trestle over Eastwood Ravine
	Sun	Oct 27	1985	11:00	Time machine destroyed

By my count, that's:
7 days in 1955
1 day in 2015 and 1985a
1 day in 1955 (doubled up on previous visit)
5 days in 1885

Which means that Marty McFly experiences 14 subjective days in 1 day and 9.5 hours by the clock in 1985.
And a very exciting two weeks it was, too.

Current Mood: geeky

Today I rediscovered, while going through old notes:

Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" has the same meter as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Current Mood: amused

In one of the boxes I opened and was going through today, I found my baby book.
Quite the trip.
Clippings, old cards, photos, and many pages neatly filled out in my mother's handwriting.
I wish she was here to go through it with me.

Current Mood: nostalgic

And now I'm a Star Trek joke.
(What do you mean, "now"?)

Current Mood: sleepy

Windows 95 is old enough to drink.

Current Mood: nostalgic

"Pfft, how hard can that be, any child can do that" - words that would haunt roboticists through the late 20th and 21st centuries. (The usual answer involves five years, a big grant, and a lot of researchers sitting in corners twitching.)

Consider "easy" tasks like "pick up the red ball, without dropping or crushing it, and throw it to this other person." (ohgod)

Current Mood: geeky

An Imgur gallery demonstrating how various silent films pulled off their effects - with forced perspective, matte paintings, etc

Of course, for at least one of the examples with Buster Keaton, there is no trick; he just did it, and they filmed it.

I have a sudden urge to bridge time and space so that he can co-star in something with Jackie Chan.
No insurance company would cover the production, but it would be amazing.

Current Mood: impressed

My resolution is simple:
Get through it.

yeah, that's where we are now.

2016, ancient and bearded, lies upon his deathbed. The crowd gathered to observe his passing is larger than for most years, and while the range of sentiments displayed is typical, the proportions are not - the genuine mourners are fewer, those waiting for the end with bitter or hateful anticipation more numerous. Most common of all, this time, are those who appear anxious and uncertain; they are all but silent in their collective dread, as the outgoing year breathes his ragged last.

It is to one of the latter that the year raises one withered claw of a hand and beckons. Nervously, the witness approaches the bier and, at another gesture, leans closer. Cracked lips move almost soundlessly; the listener's eyes widen, blood draining from their face, and they straighten and step back. Then, with a choking spasm, a sigh and a rattle, the old and much despised year finally expires... with what can only be described as a look of unholy triumph on his deeply lined face.

"What did he say?" someone asks.

The horrified witness turns to the multitude. "He said... 'now, it gets worse.'"

Somewhere, in a darkened nursery, there is a crib. And within, peering through the bars, two points of red light like hot coals.

Current Mood: worried

Kelly St. Clair

a regular occurrence in my Fallout Shelter game

Odd association of the ... day?

Crashlanding, 2017

just stare at the blank page until words form

damn Greys takin' our jerbs

Old enough to vote... with your feet

A Tribute to Carrie Fisher

Listening to the tapes

Pieces of my past

Closing the book

See You on the Other Side

Gotta get back in time

Unearthed arcana

Back to the beginning

Once more around the sun

random realization

More on "easy" problems vs. hard

The Birth of Special Effects

2017

hour come round at last

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August 2017

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