I CAN HAZ JOB NAO?

Those of you who follow me on twitter have probably noticed that I've been playing catch-up a lot (as I do), and deduced that I've been busy lately. Well, there's quite a good reason for that: I have a job now. I'm actually employed full-time and working in my field. So, hooray and all that.
I'm still getting adjusted to the new schedule and figuring out how to juggle everything. Once I get used to it, everything should go smoothly. Until then, it's going to be pretty crazy.

So, in conclusion: JOB GET!

You Might be a Geek If... GadgetHovel edition

First of all, I made a Google doc with all of my original "you might be a geek if..." submissions. Here's the link.
You might be wondering what that is. Well, @Aron1701 (henceforth "Todd"), the guy who does the GadgetHovel webcomic, also does a "podcast", called the "Toddcast". Recently, his 100th episode was coming up, and he asked listeners to submit "you might be a geek if..." phrases/jokes. It's a bit like the "you might be a redneck" stuff, but for geeks. Y'know, the opposite of rednecks. ;)
Todd cheated and had a co-host on the show, by the name of "Matt". They went through the "you might be a geek if..." submissions, to see what they got and what they didn't. Since they indicated that they wanted feedback, I figured that I could provide it in this blog post. So, here it is, a per-item list of my "you might be a geek if..." submissions and how they both fared.

You might be a geek if...

...you know what a "mummorpuhguh" is. "Mummorpuhguh" (spelling it pseudo-phonetically - I've only heard it pronounced) is a sort of tongue-in-cheek term to refer to an MMORPG, as used by Yahtzee at Zero Punctuation.
Matt couldn't figure this one out, but Todd managed to, even if he did stumble over the words. However, neither one of them managed to figure out that it was a reference to the aforementioned Zero Punctuation.

...you've visited www.kli.org. The KLI is the Klingon Language Institute, and kli.org is their site.
Matt & Todd both got this one right. Todd also has a Klingon dictionary. I'd also like to point out, per their tangent on J.R.R. Tolkien, that Tolkien was actually a philologist.

...you can correctly spell any of the following words without looking them up: nuqneH, bat'leth, Qapla'. Obviously, this one was based on the idea that the list would be read on the air, so you wouldn't just see the spellings of the words. These are some extremely common Klingon terms.
They mispronounced "nuqneH". Matt somehow couldn't pronounce "bat'leth". They managed "Qapla'" pretty well for humans. I couldn't actually test their ability to spell these, of course. ;)

...you've read at least 2 more RPG books than you've played. This should be pretty self-explanatory. Myself, I've read quite a few more RPG books than I've gotten to play.
Matt passed this litmus test, but Todd didn't.

...you've applied the system from one game to the setting of another. This refers to taking the rules/mechanics from one RPG and applying them to the setting/universe of another. I present you Don't Rest Your Spirit of the Century (not mine), which takes the amazing system for Don't Rest Your Head and applies them to Spirit of the Century.
Though neither of them seems to have actually done this, Matt actually knew what I meant, whereas Todd did not.

...you've invented your own race, class, or feat/aspect/power/spell/special ability/whatever for an RPG. This refers to making one's own race (species) or class in an RPG, or, also in an RPG, making a feat, aspect, or similar thing.
Todd apparently invented a race for a game so that his player could play a droid. Matt claimed to have done it, saying that it's necessary in the Hero system, but I don't know enough about the Hero system to say whether that's really what I was meaning. To compare, I wouldn't count Godlike as necessitating the creation of powers, even though one usually does combine powers, simply because the new powers created are just a mix of existing powers. I'm trying to explain this briefly, and not doing too well, possibly because it's 0100. Let's move on...

...you own at least two dice of each 20, 12, 8, and 4 sides, and at least four 10-sided dice. This is a reference to polyhedral die sets, though one could obtain the dice individually. Basically, one could read this as "you own at least two polyhedral die sets". Each set has two 10-siders, which is why I insisted on 4 of them. I ignored 6-siders because people regularly have at least 4 among various board games.
It sounded like both Todd and Matt had at least that many dice.

...you own at least 72 six-sided dice. I came up with this number because 5mm (I think) dice usually come in a box of 36 (four 3x3 layers). Two such boxes would yield 72 dice. For the record, I've purchased 3 such boxes, for a total of 108, not to mention all of the various other 6-siders that I own (including those from polyhedral sets).
Todd didn't have this many, but ... did Matt say?

...you know what it means "to tank", "to pull aggro", and "to buff", and not in the sense of polishing things. For those who don't know, these are MMORPG terms. "To tank" means "to soak attacks/damage." "To pull aggro" means "to draw aggression", which is MMORPG speak for "to get monsters to attack oneself instead of others," which has to do with party/group/fellowship play. "To buff" means "to give a boost," such as +1 to attack, +5 to damage, or +2 to armor class.
They both knew this, and given how much Todd talks about WoW and Champions, I'd be disappointed if he didn't.

...you always know where your towel is. A good hitchhiker always knows where his towel is.
They both knew what this one meant, though neither said whether he actually always knew where his towel was. Also, Todd managed to screw up "hoopy frood". For the record, I regularly carry around at least one towel on my person.

...you know that "Him Who Must Not Be Named" could kick Lord Voldemort's ass. The Unspeakable One trumps any mere wizard.
They couldn't figure it out, even with their Google-fu. I am very disappoint.

...you give away gifts at your own birthday party. This is a reference to how Hobbits celebrate their birthdays. This one may have been a bit too subtle.
They had no idea.

...you know why that last one is on this list. Well, I couldn't very well expect people to actually give away gifts at their own birthday parties, now could I?
See above.

...you know what Goblinization Day is. Goblinization day is the day in the Shadowrun timeline when several humans forever changed into trolls and orcs, leading to the existence of those races in the Shadowrun universe.
Matt knew; Todd didn't.

...you know what the AADA is. The American Autoduel Association is of course a reference to Car Wars.
They couldn't figure it out, and with hilarious results. For further details, see the next entry.

...you know what the "Free Oil States" are, and which ones they are. The "Free Oil States" are Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, after they secede from the United States of America in the Car Wars timeline.
They couldn't figure this one out, either, until they Google'd it. Naturally, as they're both Steve Jackson properties, the result of this was "something to do with GURPS".

...happiness is mandatory. This is from Paranoia, a great darkly humorous RPG, which takes place in a facility known as "Alpha Complex".
Matt got it down to "internet meme", and I think that Todd knew it, though he wasn't able to remember the name of the game.

...you don't have clearance for that, Friend Citizen. This is another Paranoia reference.
They had no idea. Todd actually surrendered. XD

...you've died during character creation. This is a Traveller reference. For those who don't know, in the original Traveller, character creation began with determining one's character's career prior to the game, which included a mix of choices and random die rolls. There was also something of a push-your-luck mechanic: the longer that one's career went, the greater his possible rewards, but also the more opportunities to die, causing the player to have too start over.
Neither said that he'd ever had an actual during-creation character death. Also, the hypothetical scenario that Todd devised wouldn't work in D&D (which it sounded like it was). Starting Con mod never goes below -3, and one doesn't roll for initial HP, so even a Wizard or sorcerer would get at least a 4 on the die.

...you regularly say "gorram", "frak", or "frell". "Gorram" is a replacement for "damn" from Firefly. "Frak" is a replacement for "fuck" from Battlestar Galactica. "Frell" is a replacement for "fuck" or "hell" from Farscape.
Todd and Matt passed this one with flying colors, though Todd bungled the pronunciation of "gorram" sometimes.

...you can recite either Mr. Freeze's opening monologue or his closing monologue from "Heart of Ice". "This is how I'll always remember you: surrounded by winter, forever young, forever beautiful. Rest well, my love. The monster who took you from me will soon learn that revenge is a dish best served cold." I just typed that from memory, though I suppose that you'll have to take my word for it. For future reference, "Heart of Ice" was an episode from the truly great Batman: the Animated Series. It's probably best remembered among Batman fans as the instance where Mr. Freeze changed forever, as he was previously just a generic cold-themed villain.
Well, Matt at least knew that "Heart of Ice" was an episode from Batman: the Animated Series, so there's that. ... moving on...

...you know who Elim (the tailor) is. This is, of course, a reference to Elim Garak, from DS9.
FAIL!

...you sometimes read sequential art right-to-left. This is, of course, a reference to Japanese manga. If you sometimes read manga, then you might be a geek.
Todd knew that "sequential art" means "comics", but considered the whole thing a puzzle. Matt had it figured out.

...you know what "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu" is, and watched it in broadcast order. "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu", better known as "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" here in the states, is an anime series famous for being broadcast in non-chronological order.
Todd had no idea. Matt at least knew what it was, but assumed that I meant "while it was being broadcast".

...you've dressed up as a video game, anime, manga, or western print comic character, and it was neither Halloween season nor a costumed ball. This basically means "you've cosplayed", but limited to the particularly geeky things. I also didn't want to give everyone who's ever done Halloween a free pass.
Todd hates costumes. Matt had some weird story about wearing tights.

...you answer uncertain questions with "42". This is another Hitchhiker's Guide reference.
They got it.

I actually sent in another "you might be a geek if..." at the last minute, but it apparently wasn't soon enough to make it onto the show, so I'll avoid mentioning it here just yet, just in case it gets mentioned on the next episode.

Conversations Regarding Conversation Hearts

So, we got some conversation hearts recently, and, as usual, some of them struck me, but this time, since I'm trying to blog a bunch this year, I figured that I'd blog about them.

"Marry Me"
Forward much? This is either a very forward proposition for a conversation heart or a very poor choice in marriage proposals, unless you met at a NECO fan club or something.

"Adore Me"
Note that this does not, in fact, say "I adore you", but rather says "adore me". The giver is instructing the receiver to adore him or her, which works just about as well as saying "love me" or "have the same interests as I do".

"Tweet Me"
Oh, I see that twitter has become mainstream now. Well, that's going to be about as effective at stopping me as the mainstreamness of blogs is at stopping me from blogging.

P.S.: It's a short post this week, as I forgot about what subject I had originally intended to blog.

Twitter: It's Over Five Thousand!

As I'm writing this, I'm about to hit 5,000 tweets on my twitter account. According to http://howlonghaveyoubeentweeting.com/, I've been tweeting for 1 year, 9 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, and some change. I started on March 23, 2008. It's not quite two years. Now, I'm fairly certain that the utility either checks when the account was made or checks when the first tweet was tweeted, so there's little regard for frequency, so you'll have to just trust that I've been tweeting mostly at a steady rate ever since I got the account. Anyway, I'm writing this post about my experiences with and on twitter.
Initially, the concept seemed quite useful. Twitter asks "What are you doing?" as its proposed question, and one answers in 140 characters or less. Applications using twitter were in development (and new ones continue to be produced), so my plan was to get onto twitter, wait for things that would allow my twitter account to interact with AIM/MSNIM/YIM/Gmail Chat/Pidgin, and interface them so that I'd have a one-stop shop for my current status, rather than having to edit my status on each of those things separately.
Well, for various reasons, that didn't quite work out. Among them was that twitter has become a social network of sorts. I can follow people, basically saying that I'm a fan of theirs or that I consider them my friends. People can follow me, saying that they're fans of mine or that they consider me their friends. And, of course, mutual following amounts to mutual fandom or friendship. For those who don't know, on twitter, one's main page has a feed of one's own tweets plus tweets from those that one follows, lined up in temporal order. Unfortunately, if I want "mentions" of me, including those from people that I don't follow, I have to go to a separate thing. It's easy to miss communications that way, but I'm in the habit of, rather than refreshing the page, clicking the replies link, then clicking the home link again, to check both.
As I'm writing this, I'm following 108 people and I have 140 followers. Also, to the best of my knowledge, I've only been blocked by one user, for reasons unknown. Wait, I'm following 108 people? That sounds like a lot. On reviewing that list, though, I see a few things. First of all, accounts can belong to companies and organizations, so I'm following, for instance, @CERN and @diradio (belonging to CERN and www.di.fm, respectively). Also, some people don't tweet that often, so following them doesn't clutter up my feed that much.
Some features have been added to twitter since I signed on. For one, retweeting has been quite popular, where one says "ReTweet @UserName ", or "RT @UserName " for short. However, that only works for tweets that are shorter than [135 - [UserName.length]] characters long. To "solve" this dilemma, twitter itself added a "ReTweet" feature, which works alright, except that it doesn't allow the addition of comments to the ReTweet, which was one of the advantages of the old way with very short original tweets. The other notable new feature is lists. I follow various people for various reasons. Now, I can sort them into lists, if I wish to look at a specific topic for some reason. Also, other people can follow these lists to follow a whole group of people at once. Among other things, I have lists on the topics of atheism, steampunk, conventions, and scifi. I will say, though, that I have yet to follow someone else's list. I've seen only a few, and they generally either include people that I don't want in my feed or include so many people that I fear an overcrowding of my feed. Also, I've just checked, and all of my lists are followed by either 0 or 1 users. I'm also on 9 lists, but 4 of those are my own.
Of course, the question is also begged: How did I get 139 followers? Well, I'll admit that several of them are spam accounts. I stopped bothering to remove them a while back. Basically, I think that they follow people in the hopes of getting followed back so that they can direct message them. (Direct messaging is only available between people who follow each other.) So, they don't actually hurt me, and I don't feel like culling my followers regularly. Of course, plenty of my followers are legitimate accounts who follow me because... actually, I don't know why. I guess that they just like what they see.
I've followed people and I've been followed, sometimes by the same people and sometimes not. I've made lists and I'm on lists. I've met people and people have met me. I've entertained people and I've been entertained. Overall, this twitter thing has been a positive experience, even if it didn't work out for my original plans.
I'm planning to announce this blog post for tweet number 5000.