The Chronicles of the Strategos

CNN puts Barack Obama's delegate count at 1625. He needs 2025 to secure a majority. The number of superdelegates is 800. Without superdelegates, 1625 delegates would constitute a majority.

If the Democrats didn't have superdelegates, Barack Obama would already be the nominee, and be able to get on with the election proper. If Hillary Clinton pulls the nomination now, it'll be a case of the Democratic Party "Elites" overturning the decision of the voters in the state primaries. I'd say this primary season constitutes as good an argument against the existence of superdelegates as the 2000 election does against the existence of the electoral college.

This concludes Ted's out-of-nowhere politics post.

I've been looking at the prometheus club community (which is the files open to the members of the Prometheus Society in Adventure), and I have not been able to work out how to post to it at all. Li'l help?

You know what feels really weird?
Accidentally stepping on a cricket while barefoot.

The D&D game I was in ended with our party burning through all our consumable items, all of our spells and most of our hitpoints to deal with a black dragon that the paladin finally decapitated. He never did get a helmet (it would have been eagle-head), but he did end up with a nice dragon-head trophy. Also, he finally got to rescue an innocent in a campaign full of choosing lesser evils. So he was happy. Our DM went to Denmark for a year, so we started a new campaign which only went one session (I played a Neutral Angry dwarf ranger), but in which we got to kill a Medium white dragon (coup de grace while sleeping, surprise round, dragon gets last on initiative and dies without attacking). Fun times.

Only 300-odd unheard songs remain on my laptop's hard drive, down from over 1000 following the Night of Many Laptops late last semester. Also, I finally found the security setting that would let people get stuff off my laptop. Yay for basic technological proficiency.

I was in the musical "Oklahoma" at my church. I got to play an extra named Slim with about a dozen lines and who gets punched in the face to start off a brawl. The hours that rehearsal took up disqualified me from at least one job I applied for, but it was fun. I also got a nifty t-shirt that makes the church building look like a tower-o-doom.

So! Apparently 4th Ed D&D is coming out May '08. There's not really any information available on it, but hopefully they'll iron out some of the kinks in D&D. At any rate, I'm sure a game will be run by someone at BSFFA next year.

The next step in restoring full function to the Wii is to see if the Vintage Stock up the road will repair it, which Ben from Oklahoma suggested they would. Here's hopin.

Speaking of Ben from Oklahoma, he will be leaving for Beloit this Friday; I have already seen him for the last time before I see him there. School soon! Work, friends, and games galore. Looking forward to it.

And just because it hasn't been said on this journal yet, Happy Thursday, everybody!

Ha! Eat it, old man!

So, beneath the first plate I remove with a #0 Phillips head screwdriver, I find another plate held in with Y-head screws, which I had never even heard of before. None of the hardware stores around here have Y-head screwdrivers, so I attempted to substitute a very small slot screwdriver. I made a little more progress before the slot screwdriver was damaged to the point of uselessness, so I bought another tiny slot screwdriver and managed to get the Wii put back together. Net progress: 0, but I did manage not to break the thing. I have also bought a memory card, so on the off chance that the place I bought it from has another, I can exchange it without losing all my save data.

Goobles leaving has opened up a spot in house (2nd floor), which I got. Sadness for Goobles leaving, but yay for in-house! It's a single even!

In other news, taking a screwdriver to the Wii now. Wish me luck.

My wii has just refused to eject a game disc. According to the internet, my options are open it up (with a screwdriver I don't have), get it repaired (by mailing it in and waiting for weeks) or exchange it for a new one (not bloody likely). I have decided to buy the screwdriver and very carefully open it up and see if I can fix the problem without breaking it.
Is this a terrible idea?

I was on stamos before it went down for reformatting. When it came back up, it didn't require a password and I got on it again. Then it realized what was up and locked me out, and my old id and password didn't work.
So, who do I talk to to get back on stamos?

In other news, citizens are being encouraged to break it down.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CnHgH1uybZY

DM: You splatter Hunk across the bar. Patrons scream and flee in terror. Bits of gore drip down the walls.
Party member: (wiping face) Cool.

So yeah, I finally overcame my laziness and posted an update on Livejournal. After about a year. I'm very lazy. Anyway!

Item the first: Went home to Oklahoma after passing all my classes. My high school friends I'm deliberately staying out of contact with, but my church friends remain awesome and in weekly contact. One of them, named Ben, will be coming to Beloit in the fall so he can be confused with me, as per usual, but also with Ben, who already goes to Beloit and is confused with me in a separate phenomenon. By our powers combined, we are hella confusing. Note to self: mention Dorsk 81 to Ben. Either one, really.

Back to the point, my church friends and I are starting up a D&D game, and I am playing a Paladin, which I have never done before, in an Egyptian setting. Stargate people, what silly helmet should I wear? Sadly, we're starting at 1st level, so a set of magic armor with a working Happy Bird/Sad Bird helm is out of the question. For Now. Anyway, it occurs to me that all the paladin special abilities are based on charisma; therefore, the strength of your god-given powers depends on how pretty you are. Heh.

Item the Second: Mom is recovering from surgery (which I didn't find out about until afterwords. Apparently it was during finals and she didn't want to bother me.) This means that I do all the heavy lifting for her, doctor's orders. I was on job search, but the jobs I wanted, didn't want me, and I have enough savings that I don't need a job per se. So, doing most of the work around the house for my mom is going to be my "job" this summer, and in return, Mom agrees not to bother me about it. Any writing I get done is a side benefit.

Item the Third: So, soon after arriving home and with little to do, I took a walk through the shopping center that is next to my house checking various shops for Wiis. The fifth of the six possibilities had one on the first trip. It (and two others) had come in few hours ago and by the time I left the store all but one had been snapped up. This is such a magnificently improbable occurrence that it could only have been caused by a natural 20 (Ow! Dun dun dunna!) on the first roll. The Wii is fully as awesome as advertised, you people who don't have one. You should totally buy one. You know. When you get the chance.

Item the Four: Robbie is putting up a webcomic over at vor.comicgenesis.com. It looks pretty good, the five pages or so that are up. People should read it.

They're so cute and cuddly! http://www.tallyhall.com/video.php?v=1133565758.mov#theater

And then I went and read this article (http://www.dcmilitary.com/navy/tester/11_02/national_news/39041-1.html)
and found out that they're making a heads up display helmet for fighter pilots which displays things on the left when they turn their heads left. Nice.
In other news, Happy 4th of July!
Ted Bottoms, Master of This & That

I was bored, so I got myself an LJ. Now I can post on bsffahistory or whatever.
Random speculation: computers keep shrinking, eventually the functionality of a PC will be carried out by a set of sunglasses with earbuds and a heads up display in the lenses. Instead of sitting around typing, people will sit around staring into space and muttering to themselves. Not that we don't do that already.

Ted Bottoms, Le Doppelganger