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Damp Dave

Originally uploaded by eidolon.

In my ongoing “bike a little further each day” track this week, I decided to run some errands while I was out riding. Today’s trek took me about 9.5 miles down to the Natick DPW and back.

Wunderground showed no storm clouds in the area, though the report said there may be some, so I decided to give it a whirl. I don’t mind getting wet, but I would have liked to avoid it.

Wellll, I didn’t. I stopped for lunch on the way back (really the main reason I was going out), at a less than exciting pizza place (Pizza Plus in Natick. Okay food, not exactly a charming venue) for about 20 minutes. As I was leaving, I noticed it was a lot darker, and a light rain was beginning to fall. Oh well, I’ll just suck it up and deal. I only had about 2.5 miles to go to get home.

As I was making my way up Rt 27, the rain got steadily harder, and I was hearing thunder. I stopped for a bit under a tree to move my Treo from my front pocket to my backpack, and to take my glasses off. I thought maybe the rain would subside quickly, but after 10 minutes of waiting, it was obvious it wasn’t going to, so I pushed on.

I’ve never really ridden in a downpour before. At first I was a little irked by the steady strip of wetness up the back of my pants (I had a backpack on, so that keps my back from getting splattered), but after 5 minutes or so, I was soaked through and through anyway, and just laughed and started enjoying it.

I was chilled initially, but warmed up quickly, and started cranking along at a good pace. Initially avoiding puddles, I gave up and plowed right through (some a few inches deep). I took great pleasure in noting I was moving quite a good clip -faster- than the folks on Rt 27 (where traffic has steadily gotten worse over the last year or two), and realized about 15 minutes in that I was in my stride. Average speed was about 13-14mph, I was moving smoothly, and was in my groove. I was completely soaked, but I was laughing the whole time.

Passed a jogger on the way “Another beautiful day, eh?” I called out. She gave a ‘Yeah!’ and continued on.

All too soon I was back at the house. I wanted to snap a quick picture – it doesn’t convey the total drenchedness of the experience, but I there I was.

A few things I’m thankful for out of this experience.

• I didn’t need to be anywhere where I had to be DRY. Was able to come home and strip down.
• I can see ‘okay’ without my glasses. In that rain, if I had to keep them on, it would have been bad news.
• I brought my backpack. I was able to transfer my Treo into it to keep it dry, and my book stayed dry as well. Yay my O’Gio backpack.

Tomorrow? Hopefully we can crack 10 miles. We’ll see! For now, it’s time for towels and warm clothing.

Group Mining in Eve

Originally uploaded by eidolon.

As in most MMPORGS, Eve Online has a way of organizing into groups with other players. In World of Warcraft, this are called ClansGuilds. In Eve, they’re called Corporations. Recently I joined a corporation that has taken a completely socialist tack.

Our ‘Collective’ pools all resources. Cash, ships, equipment, eveyrthing are all owned by the corporation. Members of the corporation can take any of the ships or equipment or weapons anytime, long as you put it back or replenish when done. All money from operations, missions, and bounties go into the collective wallet.

Recently, we needed to pick up minerals for manufacturing. A half dozen players got together and went on a mining op. This screenshot shows the op in progress. Several small mining ships re mining (me in the middle). The mining ships have almost no armor, and very small cargo holds. So the ships jettison mined ore into holding containers, or ‘cans’. The cans are ‘gang’ owned – meaning anyone in the mining group can open them. Another pilot has a ‘hauler’. His job is to run around to all the cans emptying them of ore, and shipping the ore back to the corporation’s hangar. A round trip of about 10 minutes, but the hauler can hold 50x what a mining frigate can hold.

Also in the gang are escorts. Their job is to keep rats (NPC pirates) and normal pirates (player characters) off our backs while we mine. We’re in ‘low security’ space, so there’s no police (in Eve, they’re called the Concord) around to help keep law and order. We’re on our own.

This is a community of players working together toward a common goal – the strength and prosperity of the corporation, which we’re all a part of.

This is a great game.

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Originally uploaded by eidolon.

My goodness, what a couple days. I’ll try and write a nice long pictorial history of the trials and tribulations that were AnimeBoston. All in all, a successful, if exhausting event. By far the largest deployment I’ve ever done, with our fastest throughput ever (over 500 badges printed per hour). Next year we’ll go even faster!

This picture is from Sunday, getting close to closing registration. The lone security person (whose name escapes me, but she was awesome all weekend) is directing the few last-minute registrants to either pre-reg or at-con registration lines. We did have a few hundred show up on Sunday, even some who had pre-registered.

Spectacular mad props to Ben and Barb for pulling 12+ hour days all weekend, and dealing with my own crotchetiness.

Spring Storm

Originally uploaded by eidolon.

We get some lovely storms coming up the coast. This one was the leading edge of a storm front that just whipped through Worcester county. The radar image looked just like a boomerange. Nothing in front of it, nothing behind it, heavy rain and wind and clouds at the front and rear edge.

Zach and I went down to the edge of the lake and took this picture just as the front edge was moving over us. Within 90 seconds of this picture, we were being pelted with pretty heavy duty hail.

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Originally uploaded by eidolon.

I rarely get the chance to create something in the kitchen, but somewhere I got a reputation for making nice fruit bowl sculptures. Since we’re going down to a birthday party for Catya‘s grandmother today, I had a request to make another fruit bowl.

This was a smaller watermelon than I usually use, so instead of the ‘built in handle’ I usually do, I decided to make it sort of more ‘cradle’ like. I cut the melon down and removed the ‘lid, and hollowed out the interior (after cutting watermelon balls using a 1tbspn measuring spoon). After that I cut up pineapple, honeydew melon, grapes, kiwis (with Zach’s help!), and strawberrys, and mixed those in. The baby pineapple was _TOO CUTE_ to cut down, so I fitted it into the top part of the watermelon.

Toothpicks are used a bit to hold the things on the top of the melon, but mostly this is just a bowl full o fruit. We have about the same volume again to refill as folks eat, carried in a seperate set of bowls.

Dog added for scale.