something for the browncoats out there.

Via my friend Mark, here's some YouTube goodness for all you Firefly fans. Good stuff, that.

never had a doubt.

The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!

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Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron's affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

to each according to their need.

There's a rabbit breeder in Germany named Karl Szmolinsky who breeds giant rabbits which top the scales at twenty pounds when fully grown, which is a lot of rabbit. Someone in the North Korean government learned of his breeding program through the Imperialist news broadcasts, and the breeder was invited to sell twelve of his rabbits to North Korea at a humanitarian discount, presumably so the NKs could breed them en masse and alleviate the country's chronic food shortage. They also invited him to come to North Korea, share his expertise, and help them set up theor own super rabbit breeding program.

Well, a while after he had shipped the rabbits off to North Korea, the NK government contacted him again and rescinded the invitation. Apparently, they didn't need him anymore...because the rabbits were cooked and eaten by North Korean government officials at a birthday banquet for the Dear Leader.

In the meantime, the peasants and workers of the North Korean socialist paradise are starving, and forced to subsist on grass soup and other such delicacies. Why a country that can't feed its own people wants to spend a lot of cash and energy acquiring one or three Really Big Firecrackers is beyond me, especially considering that their main Imperialist Antagonist has more than enough of those things to flatten every three-hut hamlet in North Korea if it ever came to a nuke lobbing contest.

lindsay borrows sumdood's pants.

A few weeks ago, we watched a re-run of the "Parent Trap" remake. Robin and I were both commenting on what a cute kid Lindsay Lohan was back then, and what a talented little actress she was at eleven already.

What is it about sudden fame, lots of money, and lax parenting that turns those kids into complete train wrecks? (Whoops, I guess I answered my own question there.)

Now Miss Lohan is barely twenty-one, and already a graduate of the Drew Barrymore School of Comprehensive Substance Abuse. Her latest foibles include getting arrested in a Santa Monica parking lot for DUI, and having a baggie of cocaine in her pocket. Now she's looking at possession charges and definite jail time for repeat DUI offenses. Oh, and the baggie of coke? Turns out the drugs "weren't hers", even though they were found in her pants.

Maybe this is the dastardly work of Sumdood again?

Lots of work to do...gotta drop off a doggie at the vet's for a tooth cleaning, which necessitates two trips to the vet office with both kids. If you've never left the house with an infant and a toddler in tow, you likely have no idea of the supply train and the intricate ballet of nap- and feeding time coordination required for such an excursion. Then I have to run back to the casa and straighten things up a bit, because Tamara and Art Eatman are making a house call around lunch. (I've known Art for nigh on eight years now, but I've never actually met the man face to face.) In between, I have to do some prep cooking for tonight's crock pot extravaganza, Asian Spiced Pork Ribs with Noodles.

Ah, the high-flying life of the stay-at-home dad. We don't get caught snorting coke...because we can't afford it, and even if we could, there'd be no time to snort it.

short landing of the day.

Grumman G-21 "Goose", stopped on the numbers at LOAL (Wiener Neustadt).

I'm sure there are plenty of experienced pilots who could land that bird on the width of the runway, but I was nonetheless pretty proud of putting her down on the threshold and braking to a full stop before the tail had even passed over the numbers completely.

In related news, a company called Antilles Seaplanes is tooling up to make brand new Gooses (the correct plural of the airplane's nickname), available with the original 450hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Jr. radials, or new 680hp PWC turboprop engines. I think the turboprop version looks a little unbalanced with those long engine nacelles, but I'm fond of the Goose's original lines. That's a classic aircraft, and it's great to know that one could pick up a zero hours airframe if one were so inclined, rather than an original...there are about sixty airworthy original Gooses out there, and the youngest of them is more than sixty years old.

legion at ease, i gotta feed the baby.

Bottle-feeding an infant is a time-consuming process that ties up one hand to boot, namely the one holding the milk hopper in position. I usually entertain myself with various computer-related activities while feeding munchkin #2, but my favorite games are out of the question because they require either an uninterrupted block of time, the use of two hands on mouse and keyboard, or both.

Thankfully, I found the ideal game for this scenario--Rome: Total War. I bought it a few years back when it came out, but I hadn't played it much, since most of our computer play time is taken up with communal World of Warcraft questing. Rome: Total War is a turn-based strategy game with real-time battle sequences, so it's perfect for playing turn by turn as time allows. I can play two or three turns per feeding session, and then just leave the game running in the background until I'm ready to hit the "end turn" button and advance the action.

Now, the strategy part of the game is pretty cool, but the really fun part is the real-time battle module. When you shuffle your legions across the map, and they come in contact with an army or settlement of the opposing factions, you can choose to have the battle resolve automatically (if you don't have the time to fight it out), or you can take charge of your army and test your mettle on the battlefield. If you choose that option, you're in control of unit deployment, formations, marching orders, and so on. When the battle commences, things usually go to hell quickly, and it's a lot of fun watching thousands of little animated legionnaires under your command duke it out with the Gauls, Macedonians, Carthaginians, and other assorted adversaries.

Yesterday I was wrapping up my conquest of the Greek city states, advancing an army on Athens.

(geeky battle narrative follows)

The Greeks oblige by marching their army out and meeting mine in front of their capital, which means that I won't have to start a costly siege and pry the defenders out from the streets of a fortified city. I deploy in standard manipular formation--skirmishers out front, cavalry on the flanks, and the center consisting of Hastati in the front and Principes in the back. The Greeks have mostly hoplite companies--hard to crack from the front, but easy kills when you flank them. My plan is to have the skirmishers thin their formation a bit, then hold them by the nose with the infantry and kick them in the ass with the flanking cavalry.

So far, so good. I advance my little troops in neat formation, ready to tag and bag the Greeks, when Greek reinforcements arrive on the battlefield. Just entering the battlefield in the distance are a bunch of Spartan hoplite companies whose presence in the area was unreported by my scouts.

Festive. Now I'm the meat in a hoplite sandwich, with a Greek army in front of me, and a Spartan army coming up from behind. Splitting my army and taking both on at the same time is not an option--I'm already outnumbered, and I don't have enough cavalry and velites to go around to support two different infantry battles.

Fine--screw the original plan, says I. The forward formations of skirmishers are just about to make contact with the Greeks, and I whistle them back and have them retreat through the ranks of advancing infantry. The Hastati and Principes get new orders: double-time on the advance, and rush the Greek front without the customary exchange of skirmisher missiles. The enemy skirmishers dart out in front of the hoplites, trying to bother my infantry, but I order in the flanking cavalry and disperse them.

The main lines clash, my line of Hastati holds, and I send the Principes around for a flanking attack, while riding the cavalry all the way around the enemy formation to nail the coffin shut from behind. The Greek line crumbles like a stale muffin, and their units start routing. My little digital legionnaries want to pursue and mop them up, but I order all units to halt and reform. I get them back into formation and wheeled around just in time to engage the Spartan army which has now traversed the battlefield. Lather, rinse, repeat, and the Spartans are sent packing as well. Athens is mine, and the Greeks have lost two fair-sized formations against my understrength one. I am Maximus, baby--a military genius who can direct his legions while topping off the tanks of little Miss Lyra.

Vanquishing enemy armies while feeding the baby: how much of a geek am I?

speed reading.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed up on my doorstep courtesy of amazon.com and USPS at 11:30am. I started reading the book at 12:00-ish, and I finished it (minus pauses for feeding the kids, doing dishes, changing diapers, etc.) at 7:00pm, all 759 pages of it. I think that's a new record for me.

Robin commented on her amazement at the fact that I can read a book of that page count in seven hours, especially one that's not written in my native language. Truth be told, it probably would have taken me twice as long to read it in German at this point.