MuddyHorse Farm and Tech

The Company was pleased with our performance last year.  So they went against everything we’ve been teaching our kids, and gave us candy pills.

That’s Jelly beans on the left, mints on the right.  Or so I hope.

Alternate titles for this post:

• How Gamestop ruined my Valentine’s Day
• Gamestop Made Me Do It
• I’m an Idiot

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Well, we’re going to try out the WildBlue through Dish Network for internet.  *Sigh*.  It feels like a defeat.  I have only heard good things about Satellite internet from one person, and all the anecdotes online are negative.  But at least it is something.

Play Achievement Unlocked

This game makes me so happy.  Did I mention that I got all 1250 achievement points in Mass Effect?

Memorial day weekend, we broke the ban on Wal-mart.  Why, you might ask?  Because of Nibbler.

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Note: This post is probably wildly uninformed. Welcome to weblogs, everybody!

Then: Bush was reviled and derided for telling people to “Go shopping” after 9/11/2001.
Now: Americans are ruining the economy by saving their money!

Then: Americans don’t save enough.
Now: Americans are ruining the economy by saving their money! (OK, that was mostly a dupe, but still…)

Then: John McCain called for the TARP money to be used to buy up the bad mortgages. He was called an idiot, that was a stupid thing to do.
Now: Let’s make a Bad Bank to buy up all the bad assets!

Anyone? I’m not saying that the “thens” or the people who said them were right, I’m just saying that there’s a bunch of idiots running the country.

I just want to wish incoming President Obama all the best. He has made a lot of noise about changing the way things are done, and I hope he can stick to that.

Along those lines, he has made a lot of announcements that, frankly, haven stolen the thunder of my 2012 campaign, like a bipartisan cabinet and lobbyist restrictions. And I will be truly grateful when he brings me my internet.

Just to get a post in Dec 2008, I’ll drop a quick post here. That means I’m doing regular updates, right?

I have some draft game reviews sitting around, I’ll get to them soon.

Have a good 2009!

This is a silly, pointless blog post to see how LinkedIn deals with blog posts.

One less secret I have to keep:  see Riot Games to Summon ‘League of Legends’ in 2009 – MarketWatch.  That’s for anyone who is curious about what my friend Scott has been up to and/or the game I interviewed to work on.

I can’t believe I missed the press releases, but such is life.

The main community site is at http://www.leagueoflegends.com/

I wish them the best.  The game is fun and has a lot of teamwork potential.

This post is sparked by the recent SlashDot article: How Close Were US Presidential Elections?.  And the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates.  And listening to folks in general.  Just some observations regarding political beliefs and behavior:  people don’t listen to one another, people talk past one another, people ignore that which doesn’t fit their world-view.

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I frequently say lots of very strange things that seem unrelated to the conversation at hand.  That’s because I’m running a quite detailed conversation in my head at the same time.  I’ll try different comments and responses, and evaluate the expected responses based on relevancy and humor.

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I just imported a bunch of my posts from theconans.com so as to preserve them here.  Some of them are nice, like favorite sci-fi books.  Scroll back a bit and check it out.

My daughter asked me last night:

Daddy, what if the whole world was clay except for chain saws?

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I finally got the bulk of our photos tagged and uploaded to Muddyhorse Photos.  Enjoy!  Note:  the tag plugin for Gallery is a bit rough, but that’s what we have for now.

I took my first two bus rides today after class.  Aside from inserting my pass right, and figuring out how to get off the bus, it wasn’t too bad.  We went to Chinatown, and ate at Saint’s Alp Tea House, as recommended by dear friend Anna.  Very Tasty!

How often have you read a story where the way to defeat an enemy is to know its name?  Or seen a movie where the discovery of a name leads to control over the named object?  Some examples in popular culture:

• Rumpelstiltskin would be the prime example here.  By learning the name, and speaking it to the creature, the miller’s daughter got out of the bargain she had made (to be able to spin straw into gold, she had to give up her firstborn).
• In The Tenth Kingdom, the blind woodsman would only release his prisoner and give the heroes his magic axe if they could guess his name.  (Luckily, he kept it in his hat.)
  
• The undoing of the Horned King in The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander was the speaking of his name.
• In Aidyn Chronicles for the Nintendo64, the main character Alaron lacks a True Name, which binds his body and soul together.  Without it, he is incomplete.
  

The question is, does any of this apply to the real world?

It was, in fact, in my playing of Aidyn Chronicles that I first became cognizant of this whole business.  In it, there is a discipline of magic called Naming set in contrast to the more familiar Elemental (fire, air, earth, water) magic.  At the time, I thought, “What’s the big deal?  Is having a name and giving a name so important?”  This was 2001.

Flash forward to 2007.  I have a daughter now, and she’s struggling to learn everything in the world.  She will eat up new words and start using them immediately.  She feels every word brings her more power.

Well, knowledge is power, names are knowledge, and therefore names are power.  So I guess it makes a bit of sense.  You can know about something.  But this is not just knowing something, it is naming that something.  If you know enough about a thing, you can name it, categorize it, relegate it.  Give a name to your fear, the saying goes.

I suspect naming can have broader powers too… a way of setting the stage for a debate, for example.  If you coin a product name, a movment, a philosophy, or anything, you may well be determining the ultimate fate of that thing.  At the very least, you’re doing a bit of mind control by making a popular name that everyone speaks.

Wikipedia has a bit more discussion in this vein, under the True Name topic.

I was the tech guy again for the horse show at the Ste. Gen County fair.  Not a bad gig, but I am a terrible MS Access 97 designer, so the application is pretty bad, and generally wrong.

Actually, I can’t blame Access 97, I just did very poor requirements gathering and data analysis.  Generally, you have riders, horses, and classes (a set of horses and riders doing something specific, competing against each other).

What I did wrong was assume that each rider has one number, and each number has one rider (one and only one is the phrase, in CS and math circles).  It’s pinned to their backs, for crying out loud!  I made rider-number a unique key on the Rider table.

Well, either things changed, or I just didn’t understand things.  Now, the number is associated with the horse.  Oftentimes, if two people are using the same horse, but in different classes, then they will sign up with the same number.  Apparently, that’s how the big shows do it.

My workload now is typically 100% for the first hour and a half or so, as I try to slam in as many entries of horse/rider/class as possible, focusing on the earlier classes.  After that initial rush, things trickle down to 20% or so, while I add in late entries and print off class lists.

I have an actual Access form for adding rows to the RiderHorseClass join table.  That form doesn’t refresh its entry fields, so every change to Horse and Rider tables means I have to reopen the RiderHorseClass form and go to a new record.  Because I have key-constraints in there, I also can’t just enter data without them being in the source tables.

Anyway, it’s a classic case of over engineering, Pat-style.  I could almost denormalize the RiderHorseClass table and just allow free-form entry, if Access would be happy with that.  I do want to avoid having to type Rider and Horse names in their entierty…

Problem is, I’ve been using the DB for 10 shows now, and I am too lazy to change.  What do I do?

Anyway, one perk was this:

I just realized that playgrounds aren’t about fun. They aren’t for improving coordination, or for better social relationships.

They exist only to wear the little creatures out.

Here I am. Fear me. Read me. Love me.