Random Access

Sunday – 27 March 2011
Yesterday was a good day.

I went to visit with Perry and Kate for a bit. They were doing some pre-sale house work, so I didn’t stay terribly long. I next went to MRS Hobbies… from which I exited empty-handed.

Next, I took Defiant (my BlacBook) to Expercom — I’ve been having a bothersome problem with its PRAM battery and figured that I’d get it looked at and/or fixed while I had some free time. Mike, the tech on-duty, had never had to replace that battery in my model of MacBook, so it was something of a learning experience for both of us. While disassembling the laptop, he noticed that my case had cracks in the front of it. He said that he’d order a new top case and replace my old busted one with new Apple hotness. When we determined that there was A LOT more work involved in getting to the battery – and that they didn’t have one in stock – I decided to bring my MacBook back next week and kill two birds with one stone. Thus began the reassembly process. Everything was going hunky-dory, until Mike tried to replace my keyboard. It seemed that something in the pin connector was… off. So, he replaced it.

That’s right, my black MacBook has a white keyboard… at least for the next few days. There are a few not-so-minor differences in key-mappings (volume, built-in calculator keys, screen brightness, Spaces/Expose), but I’m getting used to them. Slowly.

I headed home and met SaraRules!, so we could decide what to do with the afternoon and evening. We decided to go see Sucker Punch.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the movie… but it wasn’t the movie I expected, if that makes sense. The movie’s tagline, “You Will Be Unprepared,” was spot on.  Let me rephrase that a bit: It was a good movie and we both enjoyed it. But it was more than just visually appealing; it told an interesting story… and it wasn’t the story that I expected. There were also a few surprising faces in the movie, as an added bonus. Also, I will be tracking down the soundtrack — it was eclectic and suited the different styles of the movie very well. I have to admit: As this movie gives yet another indication of just what Zach Snyder is capable of, I’m less leery and more curious to see next year’s take on the Man of Steel, under his direction.

After the movie, we stopped at the nearby Hobby Lobby. I picked up two more tank cars for my train. The only “problem” is that all three of my Norfolk Southern tank cars have the same road number. (I’m easily able to overlook this.) With their addition, I am now able to run three types of unit trains:

• All boxcars,
• All coal hoppers, and
• All tank cars.

After we got back home, I headed to the train room, hooked everything up to the N&W Bantam J and ran a 23-car consist. It made me smile.

And, sometime overnight… it snowed.

Stray Toasters

• Former U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro passed away yesterday.
  • The Pioneer: Geraldine Ferraro (1935 – 2011)
  • Ferraro was a trailblazer for women
• How D.C.’s Cherry Blossoms Almost Didn’t Bloom
• A Girl’s Nude Photo, And Altered Lives
• 
• No Flying Car, But How About an Invisibility Cloak?
• A Comic Book Lover’s Guide to Going Digital
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…!?” file: Time Warner charges Wright-Patt engineer $16.4 million for cable
• Snap Judgment
• 
• On the Clothes Watch at SXSW
• Royally ridiculous Royal Wedding packages
• Microsoft Disables HTTPS for Hotmail Users in Iran, Sudan (and More)

Namaste.

Thursday – 24 March 2011
It’s a grey, rainy No Bad News Thursday in the Land Behind the Zion Curtain. WHEEE!

Last night was the first D&D 4.0 game that I’ve been able to attend in the past… three, I think… weeks. And when I arrived, it was without my character. This was a fact that I didn’t recognize until I’d walked in the door and thought “Shouldn’t I have something else?”

*grblsnrkx*

Yep. Genius move on my part. So, I got to play the part of one of the NPCs. An evil NPC, at that. I believe that it was the first time in all the years I’ve played D&D that I’ve actually played a character with an evil alignment. And, it was fun. I think that I caught a couple of my party member when I… kind of… started a fight with a bunch of guys because my character didn’t like his attitude. (We won the fight, though.) Partway through the game, I had an apostrophe epiphany: My character might actually be in my car, not at home… so I went and checked. Lo and behold, there it was.

::: facepalm :::

So, I went and got it. I played both characters for a few turns, until the NPC left the game. (His story arc was done, I didn’t get him killed.) It was a good game session.

Stray Toasters

• I’m contemplating running walking a 5K this weekend: Running of the Leopards. The two mitigating factors for me are:
  1. Weather
  2. If I can find a walking partner.
• Smithsonian. Historically Hardcore.
• Long-lost Frederic Chopin letters recovered by museum
• Bearing Witness Beyond the Witnesses
• 
• I’ve had four, count ’em… FOUR… meetings today. Before lunch.
• Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not)
• Posting “not-so-great” news about this guy might not win me any fans among the BYU crowd, considering how… revered… he is in this neck of the woods. Oh, well, here it is anyway: N.B.A. Scouting Report on Fredette: Good but Not Great
• The new – full – trailer for the upcoming Captain America movie has finally been released:

• Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server: Apple replaces Samba for Windows networking services
• Germany Steps Away from European Unity
• David E. Kelley Talks Wonder Woman
• 
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file:
  • Airport tower silent as planes land
  • Woman suing Carnival: Ship sailed too fast, made me sick
• How Western Diets Are Making the World Sick

Namaste.

Tuesday – 22 March 2011
March winds
And April showers
Bring forth May flowers.

That’s the way I was taught.

I’m good with the “March winds.”
“April showers” are good too.
And, “May flowers?” Yep, I’m fine with them, as well.
It’s the whole “March intermittent rain and snow showers” thing that I’m taking issue with today.

On the other hand, today is William Shatner‘s 80th birthday, so it can’t be all bad.

Last night was quiet and uneventful. I think that the highlights were sorting ‘Clix, making hamantaschen and watching Top Gear with SaraRules! and having a bowl of ice cream for an evening snack… not necessarily in that order.

Tonight, Chris is supposed to come over to play dolls. We’re doing an updated match of the X-Men vs. the Teen Titans. I should probably start considering who I’m going to use…

Stray Toasters

• BAMF!
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Competitive Chess Boxing: Brain Meets Pain in Iceland
• Stop the presses: Teenagers actually like, gasp, symphony concerts
• Pakistani actress Veena Malik schools a mullah about Islam
• How about a little Raphael Saddiq: Tiny Desk Concert to get your Tuesday moving?
  • Bonus track: Get Involved
• 
• As lockout lingers, NFL and players continue to trade barbs
• If you haven’t taken a look at the artwork of Colleen Coover, you should.
• Adjusted U.S. figures paint a rosier jobs picture
• Zach Snyder won’t look back: ‘There’s been no other Superman movies’
  • Zach Snyder looks to ‘Batman Begins’ for his inspiration
• Ever have one of these days?

  

• How to make a hamantaschen Sierpinksi triangle
• Goldman Sachs programmer sentenced for code theft

Namaste.

Wednesday – 16 March 2011
Apparently, it’s going to be a grey and rainy day. So be it. It’s midweek, it’s new comics day, and the new HeroClix set – Giant-Size X-Men – releases today. So there’s my ray of sunshine. In a bag.

Yesterday was The Ides of March… and it felt like it. I had an 11.5 hour day at work, thanks to a network traffic issue. I got so fed up at one point, that I went out for lunch and wound up going home, heading to the basement and running my train for a little bit of mid-day serenity. It helped. Fortunately, loonybin88 was still in town and helped sort through most of the issue. I still need to track down another (hopefully small) part of the puzzle.

When I got home, and after a late dinner and a little TV, I settled in for a hot soak and some light reading, Fables Vol. 14: Witches. That made for a perfect end to the day.

Stray Toasters

• Rapper Nate Dogg Dead at 41
  • Warren G (ft. Nate Dogg) – Regulate

• Train cars derail in Salt Lake City
• I don’t speak Russian, but Comics Alliance got their hands on the Russian preview trailer for the upcoming X-Men: First Class, which features some different footage than the American trailer.
• Mormon Politicians from Utah Feel Tea Party Heat
• Kids and Dead Tree Comics
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Powder at Kennedy Space Center tests positive for cocaine
• 
• N.J. agencies failed to wipe hard drives before resale
• What We’re Reading: March 15-21
• Remember the song, Brimful of Asha?  Meet Asha Bhosle: the voice of Bollywood
• Both of these go straight to The Covet List. Do not pass “Go.” Do not collect $200.
• 
• How Pee Helps Us Understand Social Media
• Threats to Traveling Data
• NASA: Japan quake shortened Earth’s day, shifted axis

Namaste.

Friday – 11 March 2011
It’s Friday! Hallelujah!

Last night, SaraRules! and I went out for a dinner and movie date night. We ate at Pawit’s Royale Thai. We started with the Por Pia Sod appetizer and I had the Pad Khing; I can’t remember what SaraRules! had… but she said that it was very good. From there, we went to catch a showing of Unknown. It wasn’t a bad flick. (C’mon… a movie with Liam Neeson kicking ass and taking names?  Win.) We both enjoyed it.

Stray Toasters

• Huge Quake and Tsunami Hit Japan
  • Prepare for Massive Wave of Earthquake Scams
• It’s Friday.  Here’s a little Morris Day and The Time to get it moving:

  …and…

  
  Morris Day & The Time – The Bird by coolfunk

• Allred Takes on Wonder Woman for M*A*C
• Involuntary Collaborations
• While gallivanting last night, SaraRules! and I stopped at a local grocery store to pick up a few things. On the door was a notice that the store’s pharmacy was scheduled to close, permanently, in the near future. We thought it odd, but shrugged and moved on. SaraRules! sent me this article a little while ago; apparently, it’s not just the pharmacy that’s closing.
• 
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Microsoft idea: Dating service for people with a ‘source of shame’… like comic books
• Interview with author of The 100 Thing Challenge
• Why They Endure: Booster Gold – a favorite character of mine from the 80s/90s, who still holds a fond spot in my comic readers’ heart. This article does a good job of explaining some of the “why.”
• The LockCracker

And with that… it’s lunch time!

Namaste

Tuesday – 08 March 2011
Today is International Womens Day.

It is also Fat Tuesday, apparently also making it Pancake Day.

For me, the morning started out with me shoveling somewhere between 8 and 10″ of snow off the driveway (… the closest thing that I’ve done to a “workout” in longer than I’d care to admit). That’s right, Mother Nature looked down on the Salt Lake Valley and decided that we needed a fresh blanket of snow. And it appears as though the east side of the valley got the brunt of it; west-siders got 2-3″ of new powder.

Yesterday, I received the newest addition to my layout: Angelo’s Pizza Delivery Van. That’s right, I now have “traffic.” I also noted a difference between the two vans: the pizza van is faster on the straight sections; the painting van is faster in the curves. I’m still a little torn as to whether or not I want to expand the SuperStreets to the other board. *shrug*

Stray Toasters

• ‘Oreo’: A Satire of Racial Identity, Inside and Out
• Debit Card Fees Prompt a Push Near Deadline
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Man allegedly karate chops air marshal
• The Astronaut’s Playlist: Groovy Songs for Space Travelers
  • William Shatner delivers wakeup call for Discovery’s STS-133 crew
• I played LEGO Universe for a little bit last night.
  
• Honda, Toyota, Chrysler issue recalls
• I would watch this: Zibby Challenges Ochocinco to a Fight
• DHS seeks increased cybersecurity funds for 2012
• Microsoft begs users to stop using IE6
  Two words I never thought I’d see together: “Microsoft begs.”
• Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space

Namaste.

Monday – 07 March 2011
Today was one of those “Do I really have to get up and go to work today…?” days. Not that there was anything overly ominous waiting at the office. It was more of a “Monday…blah,” kind of thing.

The weekend was good. On Friday, I had brunch with at Gourmandise. The food and the company were both excellent. Later in the day, and I made our way to the Hostler’s Train Festival, in Ogden. It was a good show; it may have even had a better turnout than last year’s show. While wandering, I saw something that I have been pondering for a while – an MTH gas station. This one was a Shell station and the seller had a really good price on it. So… I bought it:

The only difference is that mine has a VW minibus, rather than a Beetle. I also bought a/another USPS rail car:

Friday night, after work, I changed the layout again, as I mentioned in Saturday’s quick post. I like it. I may take a spur or two out of the long end… and run some SuperStreets track up there, giving me the possibility of having road traffic moving alongside rail traffic. We’ll see.

Saturday, I judged another HeroClix event at Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. It was a themed event – “Science vs. Magic” – and had a good turnout. After the game, I headed back home for a quiet evening in.

Yesterday was also rather low-key. I woke up to a grey day, which didn’t do much for motivation. I spent the morning watching TV for a couple of hours, before moving on to Call of Duty. After brunch with SaraRules, I played DCUO until it was time to do some errand-running. We had dinner-and-a-movie night with the in-laws. Last night’s fare was Unstoppable, which the in-laws hadn’t seen. Back at home, we watched a little television and then I met a coworker online for more CoD action. I wrapped up the night/early morning with a Skype call to the Vancouver branch of the family. I didn’t get to talk with Bit or Pixel, as it was well past their bedtimes… but I might do that this evening.

Stray Toasters

• If you haven’t taken a look at Utah Symphony’s new website, why not take a few moments and check it out?
• Piano Jazz Presents: The Women of Song
• Tight Budgets Mean Squeeze in Classrooms
• Wingsuit Formation Flying
• 
• Hello Kitty’s Identity Crisis
• More Women Opt for Less Invasive Breast Biopsies
• Utah G.O.P. Adopts Immigration Alternative
• 
• Microchip Paintings
• LVMH to Take Control of Italy’s Bulgari
• NFL, players’ union settle in for another week of labor talks
• Improv Everywhere: King Philip IV

Namaste.

Wednesday – 02 March 2011
Not only is it the middle of the week…
Not only is it new comics day…
MacCool’s is having another Guinness dinner tonight. And SaraRules! and I are going.

Last night, SaraRules! and I attended the Utah Symphony 2011-12 Season Announcement Reception at Abravanel Hall. Music Director Thierry Fischer (1, 2, 3) spoke about his vision for the Utah Symphony and the seven directives that drove his choices for the upcoming season and beyond. (There will be a Beethoven cycle throughout the season!) The symphony also unveiled their newly updated website. The event was neatly run and well-managed, and seemed to come off without any outwardly visible problems.

After the event, I jetted over to ‘ for our D&D 3.5 game. A couple of the players weren’t able to make it, but we still managed to accomplish a (not-so) minor goal and give ourselves a slightly longer-term objective, to boot. Now, if we can just manage to pull it off without getting ourselves killed…

Stray Toasters

• In Labor Clash, N.F.L.’s Union Calls Old Play
• Google pulls 21 apps in Android malware scare
• Galliano Case Tests Dior Brand’s Future
• 
• Supreme Court rules in favor of church that pickets funerals
  • Supreme Court Rules on Corporate Privacy
• Police Departments Turn to Volunteers
• I found the following LEGO: Star Wars ads on Ads of the World. The tagline for each ad (below the LEGO logo) is “Make Your Own Story.”
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

• iPad 2: Electric Boogaloo
• Chaotic Good or Lawful Neutral?
• Hollywood’s conservatism: Why no one wants to make a “risky” movie

Namaste.

Tuesday – 01 March 2011
A new month begins.
Today also marks the beginning of Women’s History Month.

T minus three days to the train show.
T minus sixteen days until Green Lantern/St. Patrick’s Day.

Last night was very low-key around the house. SaraRules! fixed soft-shelled tacos and rice for dinner. While eating, we knocked out the last two episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles on the DVR and watched an episode of House Hunters about a couple in Texas. (They were almost as finicky as the couple I posted about a few days ago who were looking for the one-level home.) But, they found a spot they liked.

Tonight, SaraRules! and I are attending Utah Symphony‘s 2011-12 Season Announcement Reception at Abravanel Hall. (Yeah, I get some pretty swank fringe benefits of having a wife with a cool job.) After that, I’ll be dashing off to join ‘ D&D game. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Stray Toasters

• Women Have a Right to Talk About… Everything
• Drinking Soda May Increase Your Blood Pressure
• I finally got robandsara.org back up and running… only to realize that we never posted much after (read: “anything”) after the wedding. There’s still some fine-tuning to be done, but the pages are there. I’m thinking that I’ll be adding content from here (and from some photo galleries) over the next little while to bring it a little more up-to-date.
• 
• “BlackHole” malware, in beta, aims for Mac users
• Screen legend Jane Russell dead at 89
• lj user=”gazehound”: You’ll want to check out some of the images on this page. (Particularly, the third one.)
• What’s behind home-sales-scuttling low appraisals?
• Egypt’s nostalgia and ancient civilizations
• The following ‘toon came from this page on Let’s Be Friends Again:

  

  • The notes on that page also referencedThe Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling, a very good commentary from Comics Alliance’s Chris Sims (1, 2)
• I bought a new van for my railroad layout’s Superstreets last night. I should have it in-hand sometime next week, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
• This ad…

  

  …somehow reminded me of this:

  

• Remapping Computer Circuitry to Avoid Impending Bottlenecks
• Dance! Dance! Dance! (And, by the way, Ms. , you might want to check some of these out, as well…)
• Famous, With Foot in Mouth
• NYC’s Last Chinatown Arcade Shuts Its Doors
• 
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Union Pacific Railroad Billboard Campaign Reminds Truckers to Stop for Trains
  Really…? You have to remind drivers of this? Even for non-rocket scientists, the concept of “crash” should be fairly easy to grasp.
• The Art of Video Games

She would waste not, not in struggle
No other shall there ever be
And what she is to love, listen oh my brother
Is as the wind to Mercury

Namaste.

Monday – 28 February 2011
Another week of workin’ begins. This one includes some high, hazy clouds, but the sun is out and it’s supposed to be a nominally warm day, so, in the words of Curtis Mayfield: “It’s Alright.”

Last night, we went up to SaraRules!’ parents’ for dinner: Baked fish (both cajun seasoned and parmesan)  with rice pilaf and broccoli. After dinner, we watched The Long Kiss Goodnight. Long-time readers will recognize this movie as the top end of the “Cool World–Long Kiss Goodnight” scale, my metering for bad movies. It’s a one-dart movie, but it also had some amusing dialogue and some lovely over-the-top scenes. And, more to the point: My in-laws love a good, campy action flick, so it was a perfect choice.

After dinner and the movie, SaraRules! and I headed home. I’d gotten her Fables Vol. 14: Witches, so she curled up with that while I surfed the Interwebs. I’ve also discovered that Triscuits (Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil) with string cheese make a tasty pre-bed snack.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
This year’s final Black History Month item is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or N.A.A.C.P (1, 2, 3).

Founded February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. Its mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, is one of the last surviving uses of the term colored people.

The NAACP’s headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional regional offices in California, New York, Michigan, Colorado, Georgia, Texas and Maryland. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in the states included in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. The NAACP is run nationally by a 64-member board led by a chair. The board elects one person as the President and one as chief executive officer for the organization; Benjamin Jealous is its most recent (and youngest) President.

In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African Americans met to discuss the challenges facing “people of color” (a term used to describe people who were not white) and possible strategies and solutions. Because hotels in the U.S. were segregated, the men convened under the leadership of Harvard scholar W. E. B. Du Bois at a hotel (Fort Erie Hotel) on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in Fort Erie, Ontario. As a result, the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement. A year later, three whites joined the group: journalist William E. Walling, social worker Mary White Ovington, and social worker Henry Moskowitz, then Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

The Race Riot of 1908 in Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois had highlighted the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. This event is often cited as the catalyst for the formation of the NAACP. Mary White Ovington, journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz met in New York City in January 1909 and the NAACP was born. Solicitations for support went out to more than 60 prominent Americans, and a meeting date was set for February 12, 1909. This was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the meeting did not take place until three months later, this date is often cited as the founding date of the organization.

The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909 by a diverse group composed of Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling (the last son of a former slave-holding family), and Florence Kelley, a social reformer and friend of Du Bois.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was disproportionately disastrous for African Americans, the NAACP began to focus on economic justice. After years of tension with white labor unions, the Association cooperated with the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations in an effort to win jobs for black Americans. Walter White, a friend and adviser to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, met with her often in attempts to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense industries and the agencies spawned by Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.

Throughout the 1940s the NAACP saw enormous growth in membership, recording roughly 600,000 members by 1946. It continued to act as a legislative and legal advocate, pushing for a federal anti-lynching law and for an end to state-mandated segregation. By the 1950s the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by Marshall, secured the last of these goals through Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools. The NAACP’s Washington, D.C., bureau, led by lobbyist Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., helped advance not only integration of the armed forces in 1948 but also passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Heading into the 21st century, the NAACP is focused on disparities in economics, health care, education, voter empowerment and the criminal justice system while also continuing its role as legal advocate for civil rights issues. Yet the real story of the nation’s most significant civil rights organization lies in the hearts and minds of the people who would not stand idly by while the rights of America’s darker citizens were denied.

While much of NAACP history is chronicled in books, articles, pamphlets and magazines, the true movement lies in the faces—black, white, yellow, red, and brown—united to awaken the consciousness of a people and a nation. The NAACP will remain vigilant in its mission until the promise of America is made real for all Americans.

Stray Toasters

• T minus 4 days to the Hostler’s Model Railroad 2011 Festival.
• I have discovered something about WordPress 3.1 about which I am not fond: The way it now embeds media. I shall have to continue investigating this, but it seems as though I’m not the only one who doesn’t care for it.
• Skip the Sundae? Christie Is on First Lady’s Side
  • First Lady Teams with U.S.T.A. to Fight Obesity
• 
• Jos. A. Bank is having a suit sale, today through Wednesday.
• X-Rays and Unshielded Infants
• I ran a 19-car consist on my railroad last night. That, along with the engine and tender, roughly comes out to 24 feet long — as the caboose is entering the track on one 4’x8′ board, the engine is just about to exit that board.
• Fashion Week: Milan
• For Meliko:
  
• Meetings and reports!  YAY! </sarcasm>
• Puggle (not Puggle).
• Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110
• Air travelers may have been exposed to measles
• There are… three… shirts on woot! that may make it to The Covet List.

Namaste.

Thursday – 24 February 2011
Let’s try this… again… after WordPress decided to eat (and apparently thoroughly digest) my last post. Fortunately, I wasn’t too far into it and the miscellany is all fairly easily recoverable.

Happy birthday to :

Last night was D&D 4.0 night with and company. The encounter was a little different than our usual ones: We got into a bar fight. But, it wasn’t our fault. (This time.) And by “we got into a bar fight,” I mean that “we got beat on by a hero from the Forgotten Realms” (read: “ever-so-slightly out of our league”).

Correction: We got beat on by a drunken hero (read: “still ever-so-slightly out of our league”) from the Forgotten Realms.

It was a good encounter. We all survived, though some of our group had a few new lumps. And, we left the bar in one piece (more or less) and not on fire. I’d consider that a minor feat for our party.

Chew on This : Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Charles Young (1, 2, 3, 4)

Charles Young was the third African American graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. national park superintendent, first black military attaché, first black to achieve the rank of colonel, and highest-ranking black officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922.

Charles Young was born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen in May’s Lick, Kentucky, a small village near Maysville, but he grew up a free person. His father Gabriel escaped from slavery, in 1865 going across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio to enlist as a private in the Fifth Regiment of the Colored Artillery (Heavy) Volunteers during the American Civil War. After the war, the entire family migrated to Ripley in 1866, where the parents decided opportunities were better than in postwar Kentucky. As a youth, Charles Young attended the all-white high school in Ripley, the only one available. He graduated at age 16 at the top of his class. Following graduation, he taught school for a few years at the newly established black high school of Ripley.

While teaching, Young took a competitive examination for appointment as a cadet at United States Military Academy at West Point. He achieved the second highest score in the district in 1883, and after the primary candidate dropped out, Young reported to the academy in 1884. He was not the only black student in the academy,(John Hanks Alexander entered West Point Military Academy in 1883 and graduated in 1887, Alexander and Young shared a room for three years at West Point). He had to repeat his first year because of failing mathematics. Young’s strength was in languages, and he learned several. Young graduated with his commission as a second lieutenant in 1889, the third black man to do so at the time. Young began his service with the Ninth Cavalry in the American West: from 1889-1890 he served at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and from 1890-1894 at Fort Duchesne, Utah.

Beginning in 1894 as a lieutenant, Young was assigned to Wilberforce College in Ohio, a historically black college, to lead the new military sciences department, which was established under a special federal grant. As a professor for four years, he was one of a number of outstanding men on the staff, including W.E.B. Du Bois, with whom he became friends.

In 1903, Young served as Captain of a black company at the Presidio of San Francisco. When appointed acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks, he was the first black superintendent of a national park. At the time the military supervised the parks. Because of limited funding, the Army assigned personnel for short-term assignments during the summers, making it difficult for the officers to accomplish longer term goals, such as construction of infrastructure. Young supervised payroll accounts and directed the activities of rangers. Young’s greatest impact on the park was managing road construction, which helped to improve the underdeveloped park and enable more visitors to travel within it. Young and his troops accomplished more that summer than had teams under the three military officers who had been assigned the previous three summers.

With the Army’s founding of the Military Intelligence Department, in 1904 it assigned Young as one the first military attachés, serving in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was to collect intelligence on different groups in Haiti, to help identify forces that might destabilize the government. He served there for three years.

In 1908 Young was sent to the Philippines to join his Ninth Regiment and command a squadron of two troops.

In 1912 Young was assigned as military attaché in Liberia, the first African American to hold that post. For three years, he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian Government and also took a direct role, supervising construction of the country’s infrastructure. For his achievements, in 1916 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded Young the Spingarn Medal, given annually to the African American demonstrating the highest achievement and contributions.

He returned to Wilberforce University, where he was a Professor of Military Science through most of 1918. On November 6, 1918, after Young traveled by horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio to Washington, D.C. to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty in the Army and promoted to full Colonel. In 1919, he was assigned again as military attaché to Liberia.

Young died January 8, 1922 of a kidney infection while on a reconnaissance mission in Nigeria. His body was returned to the United States, where he was given a full military funeral and buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC.

Stray Toasters

• From KUER’s RadioWest: The Creativity Crisis
  

  Researchers say creativity – the ability to generate new ideas and rearrange those ideas into the best possible outcomes – is declining sharply among America’s school children. And experts say the consequences for innovation, the economy and public policy are sweeping. Tuesday, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman join guest host Jennifer Napier-Pearce on why creativity is waning and how to turn the trend around.

• T Minus Zero: Discovery to Blast Off on Final Flight
• Paul McCartney Composes Work for City Ballet
• For Meliko: Dinosaur named “thunder-thighs”
• For (among others): 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Batman
  • Scathing Reviews of The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller
• 
• Who Buys These Clothes? They Do
• Holograms could soon give virtual meetings new life
• Trojan steals session IDs, bypasses logout requests
• From Esquire: The 75 Books Every Man Should Read

Namaste.

Saturday – 19 February 2011
It’s a grey day here… and there’s the possibility of snow in the forecast. Yay.

Last night was the beginning of the end of an era. The local Borders, where we spend the “coffee” portion of our Clitorati gathering,  is one of the nearly 300 stores that is slated to close. I’ve been going to that store for close to ten years; I started going there on Friday evenings because that was where and I would meet so that she could coach me at drawing. In fact, the entire Clitorati gathering came about from me telling people that they should come and hang out with us while we were there. And now, nearly ten years down the road, we find ourselves looking for a new home-away-from-home.

We knew that the stor was closing. What we didn’t know, until we arrived last night, was that the Seattle’s Best Coffee franchise/sublet that ran the cafe closed – for the last time – on Thursday night. This means that for the next two months (or however long it takes to liquidate their inventory), there will be no cafe service. At all. I spoke with Brandi, one of the sales associates about the closing: She said that she and the other employees found out about it on Wednesday… from The Wall Street Journal article. According to her, employees:

• …had no advance warning.
• …haven’t been offered any kind of relocation/transfer package to the Orem/Provo store.
• …will be officially unemployed when the closeout sale is over.

While Borders has been on the rocks financially for a long time, I think that it’s poor form to let your employees be blindsided by the closure news and have to find out from mass media.

Since the list of closing stores came out on Wednesday, there’s been chatter among the group as to where we should now meet. We bandied about a few places and decided that we’d test drive the new location when the time came. Funny, we weren’t quite expecting it to be so soon. We had eight people show up for coffee last night, which made for a decent litmus test. I think that our new choice fared decently; we’ll have to see how it stands up over time.

After coffee and dinner, I came home and played DCUO for a bit. I’ve decided that I don’t necessarily want to plow through the game. Instead, I’m enjoying just roaming around the city (I haven’t even left Metropolis yet) and enjoying the view. Jim Lee and his crew did an amazing job of bringing Metropolis to life. I’m looking forward to seeing the other settings the game has to offer.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Wallace Thurman (1, 2, 3)

Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.

Thurman was born in Salt Lake City, UT to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. Between his mother’s many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived with Emma Jackson, his maternal grandmother. His grandmother’s home doubled as a saloon where alcohol was served without a license.

Thurman’s early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and illness. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but his poor health eventually led to a two-year absence from school, during which he returned to Salt Lake City. From 1910 to 1914, Thurman lived in Chicago, but he would have to finish grammar school in Omaha, Nebraska.^[2] During this time, he suffered from persistent heart attacks. While living in Pasadena, California’s lower altitude in the winter of 1918, Thurman came down with influenza during the worldwide Influenza Pandemic. Considering his history of illness, he surprisingly recovered and then returned to Salt Lake City, where he finished high school.

Thurman studied at the University of Utah and the University of Southern California, although he did not receive a degree. He moved to Harlem in 1925, and by the time he became managing editor of the black periodical Messenger in 1926, he had immersed himself in the Harlem literary scene and encouraged such writers as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston to contribute to his publication. That summer, Hughes asked Thurman to edit Fire!! , a literary magazine conceived as a forum for young black writers and artists. Despite outstanding contributors, who included Hughes, Hurston, and Gwendolyn Bennett, the publication folded after one issue. Two years later Thurman published Harlem, again with work by the younger writers of the Harlem Renaissance, but it too survived only one issue.

Thurman was lauded as a satirist and often used satire to accuse blacks of prejudice against darker-skinned member of their race. He also rejected the belief that the Harlem Renaissance was a substantial literary movement, claiming that the 1920s produced no outstanding writers and that those who were famous exploited, and allowed themselves to be patronized by, whites. He claimed, as did a number of authors of the decade, that white critics judged black works by lower standards than they judged white efforts. Thurman maintained that black writers were held back from making any great contribution to the canon of Negro literature by their race-consciousness and decadent lifestyles.

Thurman and others of the “Niggerati” (the deliberately ironic name Thurman used for the young African American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance) wanted to show the real lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. Thurman believed that black artists should be more objective in their writings and not so self-conscious that they failed to acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African American lives. As Singh and Scott put it, “Thurman’s Harlem Renaissance is, thus, staunch and revolutionary in its commitment to individuality and critical objectivity: the black writer need not pander to the aesthetic preferences of the black middle class, nor should he or she write for an easy and patronizing white approval.”

Thurman died at the age of 32 from tuberculosis, which many suspect was exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.

Stray Toasters

• What Watson Might Do After Crushing Humanity on Jeopardy!
• By way of MarknTyme: Superhero Organizations and Business Entities
• Best Art Ever (This Week)
  
• (Can’t You) Trip Like I Do – Filter and The Crystal Method
• Ever wondered what the X-Men would look like as an anime-style cartoon? Wonder no more.

And with that, it’s time to finish getting ready for today’s HeroClix tournament at Dr. Volt’s.

Namaste.

Thursday – 17 February 2011
It’s another NBN Thursday in the valley. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. And the mountains (and a fair portion of the valley) is covered in white. That’s right: It snowed last night. Of course, that also means that the air is clear and one can see the west side of the valley clearly.

Last night, after work, I ran up to Dr. Volt’s to pick up this week’s four-color goodness before dashing back home to grab a quick bite to eat. SaraRules! had a Justice Junior League meeting and I had coffee with my friend, Frankie.  While out, I had thought to kill multiple avians with a single piece of silicate and get the batteries in a couple of my watches replaced. The snow made me decide to deal with that tomorrow, on my day off.

After coffee, I headed back home – time for comfy pants and comics! – to wait for the missus to get in. I even had the presence of mind to throw in a load of laundry. When she got in, we finished watching Prince of Persia. I swear that movie had more gratuitous slow-motion scenes than The Matrix, Dhoom and Resident Evil: Afterlife combined. On the whole, it was an entertaining movie — it was kind of like a live-action Aladdin. I also found it amusing that “foreign” (or at least “non-American”) still seems to mean “just speak with an (affected) British accent” to most people. *shrug*

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Paul Robeson (1, 2).

Paul Leroy Robeson was an African American concert singer (bass-baritone), recording artist, athlete and actor who became noted for his political radicalism and activism in the civil rights movement. Robeson was the first major concert star to popularize the performance of Negro spirituals and was the first black actor of the 20th century to portray Shakespeare’s Othello alongside an all white cast.

The son of a former slave turned preacher, Robeson attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was an All-America football player. Upon graduating from Rutgers at the head of his class, he rejected a career as a professional athlete and instead entered Columbia University. He obtained a law degree in 1923, but, because of the lack of opportunity for blacks in the legal profession, he drifted to the stage, making a London debut in 1922.

At the height of his career, Paul Robeson chose to become primarily a political artist. Increasing political awareness impelled Robeson to visit the Soviet Union in 1934, and from that year he became increasingly identified with strong left-wing commitments, while continuing his success in concerts, recordings, and theatre.

During World War II, Robeson’s support for the Allied War effort had made him the world’s most famous African-American and his previous statements and advocacy for socialism had been ignored by both the media and the white establishment. The start of the Cold war led to a social climate in which most civil rights and anti-imperialist groups in the United States were considered “Communist affiliated.”

In 1950, Robeson’s passport was revoked under the McCarran Act over his work in the anti-imperialism movement and what the U.S. State Department called Robeson’s “frequent criticism while abroad of the treatment of blacks in the US.” Under heavy and daily surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA and publicly condemned for his beliefs, Robeson was blacklisted, his income fell dramatically and he became very nearly a non-person.

Robeson’s autobiography, Here I Stand, was published by a British publishing company in 1958. As part of his “comeback”, he gave two sold-out recitals that month in Carnegie Hall, which were released on LP and later on CD. They were his only stereo recordings.

Also that year, Robeson’s 60th birthday was celebrated in several US cities and twenty-seven countries across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as in the Soviet Union. Later, in May 1958, his passport was finally restored and he was able to travel again, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Kent vs. Dulles, that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport or require any citizen to sign an affidavit because of his political beliefs.

By 1965, he was forced into permanent retirement. He spent his final years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unapologetic about his political views and career.

Stray Toasters

• Created Equal
• Jim Lee on the Beginning of DC Universe Online
  • Retired Superheroes (courtesy of )
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Goldfish killer “didn’t want to leave witnesses”
• 
• International Pillow Fight Day
  • Pillow Fight Flash Mob
• The Hard Luck and Beautiful Life of Liam Neeson
• U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’
• Detroit Will PAY You to Take One of These 100 Abandoned Houses

Back to it.

Namaste.

Tuesday – 15 February 2011
Day Two of the work week is upon us… and it’s a bright, sunshiny day. It’s even supposed to be fairly warm, too. And tonight is D&D 3.5 night.

Last night, SaraRules! and I had a quiet evening in. That was one of the benefits of having celebrated Valentine’s Day last week. We had a quick dinner and then settled in for a movie. As I had mentioned wanting to watch Star Trek (2009) on Saturday after watching The Hurt Locker, SaraRules! was gracious enough to agree to watch it last night. It was fun — we MSTK3-ed parts of the movie. All-in-all, it was a very good evening with the coolest wife ever.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is: President Barack Obama (1, 2):

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid against a Democratic incumbent for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party’s nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Stray Toasters

• Dwayne Johnson – The Rock Back in the Ring
• Companies Warn That Higher Prices Are Looming
• Radio sleuths may have discovered Coca-Cola’s secret recipe
• I like this new Demotivator from Despair.com:
  



• My Neutrophils Can Kick Your White Blood Cells’ Butt
• Best-Kept Secret Now Has a Grammy
  • If you didn’t know Arcade Fire, Spalding before…
  • Long-time readers may remember that I posted about Ms. Spalding in these posts: 1, 2
    
• Your Favorite Characters as Facebook Avatars
• 
• Taking Her Art Seriously, Not Herself
• Drumming Up More Addresses on the Internet
• A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans

Namaste.

Monday – 14 February 2011
It’s Monday, which means that it’s the start of another work week.

It’s also Valentine’s Day

or, as Neil Gaiman put it:

Happy Valentine’s Day. Or take pride in Being Single Day. Or join me in the newly-created Why Is My Wife In Australia Day (people who live in Australia are not eligible to join).

or, as I was just reminded: It’s Anti-Green Lantern Day. (Look at a color wheel, it will make sense then.) I wasn’t thinking about it when I got dressed this morning, but I selected a green shirt, white turtleneck and black slacks for today’s fashion fare. It wasn’t until Julie came into the office, in red-and-black that I thought about it being Anti-GL Day, too.

Yesterday, I finally picked up a six-car hopper set that I’ve been eying at a local hobby shop. It’s an older set – and showed no signs of moving any time soon – so they cut me a rather nice deal. (That didn’t hurt my feelings.) After that, I headed home and saved the world (DCUO-style) for a bit before heading over to the in-laws’ for dinner and a movie. Last night’s feature was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Huey Newton (1, 2).

Huey Percy Newton was a political and urban activist who founded the Afro-American Association and co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, the youngest of seven children to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist lay preacher. In 1945, the family settled in Oakland, California. The Newton family was destitute, and often relocated throughout the San Francisco Bay Area throughout Newton’s childhood. Despite this, he contended that his family was close-knit and that he never went without food and shelter as a child. Growing up in Oakland, Newton claimed that “[he] was made to feel ashamed of being black.” In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote, “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

Although he graduated at Oakland Technical High School in 1960, Newton was illiterate. During his course of autodidacticism, he struggled to read Republic by Plato. He read it five times to better understand it, and it was this success that inspired him to become a political leader.

In the mid-1960s Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College where he met Bobby Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school before they set out to create one of their own. Founded in 1966, they called their group The Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen brandishing weapons. The group believed that violence—or the threat of violence—might be needed to bring about social change. They set forth their political goals in a document called the Ten-Point Program, which included better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of black communities.

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in black communities and established social programs to help those in need. They also fought against police brutality in black neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse.

Newton earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz in 1974. He was enrolled as a graduate student in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in 1978, when he arranged to take a reading course from famed evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, while in prison. He and Trivers became close friends. Trivers and Newton published an influential analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. Newton earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. His doctoral dissertation was entitled War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.

On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on the 1400 block of 9th street in West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member Tyrone Robinson during an attempt by Newton to obtain crack cocaine.

Stray Toasters

• Valentine’s Day dating tips from lovestruck scientists
  • The Valentine’s Day Survival Guide
    
• In Spokane, a Mystery with No Good Solution
• Back to the Future (not the movie)
• 
• I’m not sure that I’m overly fond of the new UI on Gizmodo.
• NYC gives Optimus Prime a parking ticket
• States Aim Ax at Health Cost of Retirement
• 
• Yay for problems with the locks on the doors to two of our storage rooms!
• Watch IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy! Tonight

That’s good for now.

Namaste.